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Bengal court sentences 3 men to death for 2020 rape, murder of 15-yr-old girl
The girl’s body was found in a septic tank 12 days after she went missing. Police said she was raped by the three men and then killed
KOLKATA: A court in north Bengal’s Jalpaiguri district sentenced three men to death on Thursday for the gangrape and murder of a Class 10 student in 2020, a public prosector said.
“The accused were sentenced under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (Pocso),” Debashis Dutta, special public prosecutor of the Pocso Court, told reporters.
Police had charged the accused with kidnapping, wrongful detention, gangrape, murder and destruction of evidence.
A district police officer said the crime took place in August 2020. The 15-year-old victim was a Madrasa student.
The accused, who were aged between 20 and 27 during the crime, used to work at an automobile garage and knew the victim.
On August 10, 2020, one of the three men kidnapped the girl from her home in the Rajganj area with the help of two of his friends. “They took the minor to various hotels and raped her repeatedly before murdering her,” a police officer said.
They dumped her body in a septic tank. Her decomposed body was finally retrieved 12 days after the girl disappeared.
“The court heard 27 witnesses during the trial and described the crime as the rarest of the rare while announcing the sentence,” said Dutta.
“We sought justice. We are happy with the court order,” the victim’s father told the local media.
On June 11 this year, the same court sentenced a 31-year-old man to death for raping and murdering an 11 -year-old girl in 2023. The victim, who lived in the Dhupguri region, had gone missing on September 29, 2023. Her body was found floating in the Dudwa river on October 1, 20 km away from her home.
