West Bengal courts pronounced 6 death penalties in last 6 months for crimes against girls: Report

West Bengal courts have sentenced six individuals to death for sexually assaulting minors in the last six months.

Six convicted of sexually assaulting minors have been given the death penalty by West Bengal courts in the past six months, despite the fact that the state's last legal execution for the rape and murder of a juvenile in Kolkata occurred more than 20 years ago.

The brutality of the rapes and killings committed against girls resulted in death by hanging sentences in six of the seven instances. (Reuters )

For killing his family members, another prisoner was also given the execution penalty, bringing the state's total number of death sentences throughout the past six months to seven, reported news agency PTI.

The brutal nature of the rapes and murders committed against girls qualified them under the "rarest of the rare" category, where offenders were prosecuted under the POCSO Act in addition to sections of the IPC and, later, the BNS. In six of the seven instances, death by hanging penalties were imposed, reported Deccan Herald.

The list does not include the sentence for Sanjay Roy, the convicted rapist and murderer of a trainee doctor at RG Kar Medical College and Hospital, who was given life term till death by a Kolkata court instead of the death penalty.

It also excludes the alleged rape and murder of a 14-year-old Class 8 student, whose battered and bruised body was discovered on February 7 of this year in New Town, close to Kolkata, and in which a 22-year-old e-rickshaw driver was taken into custody by police.

On the eve of Independence Day in 2004, Dhananjay Chatterjee, a security guard at a south Kolkata residential building, was hanged at Alipore Jail for raping and killing a 16-year-old schoolgirl in her flat in March 1990. This was the last judicial hanging in West Bengal.

Between September of last year and February, the death sentences related to the heinous crimes came in.

List of death sentences

• On September 7 last year, a POCSO court in Siliguri, northern West Bengal, condemned Md. Abbas to death after finding him guilty of raping and killing a 16-year-old girl in the Matigara region in August 2023 as she was on her way to school.
• Ashok Shaw, a cooking gas delivery person, was given a death sentence on September 26, 2024, by a special POCSO judge of the Alipore District and Sessions Court in Kolkata for a horrifying crime that occurred in the Tiljala neighbourhood of East Kolkata. On March 26, 2023, the offender used chocolates to lure his neighbour's little girl to his flat, where he sexually assaulted her before using a hammer to bash her head. According to the investigating officer, the girl's mangled body was discovered in his kitchen inside a sack, with 28 wounds on her body. When a rioting crowd set police cars on fire, the act sparked violent riots in the area.
• Mustakin Sardar, 19, was sentenced to death by another POCSO court in Baruipur on December 6 last year for the rape and murder of a 10-year-old Class 4 student who was discovered raped and suffered 42 injuries. The crime was perpetrated on October 5 of that year in the Kultali neighbourhood of Joynagar in the South 24 Parganas district, and the judgment was delivered 62 days later. Taking to her X handle, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee wrote, “Conviction and capital punishment in such a case in just over two months is unprecedented in the history of the state... The govt has zero tolerance towards offences against women and will continue to ensure that justice is neither delayed nor denied.”
• Less than a week later, on December 14, Dinabandhu Haldar, 35, was given the death penalty by a court in Jangipur, Murshidabad district, for the rape and killing of a young girl in Farakka during Durga Puja in October. Subhajit Haldar, 23, the convict's accomplice, was also given a life sentence by the court.
• Ten days later, a trial court in Chinsurah, Hooghly district, sentenced 42-year-old Pramathes Ghoshal to death for killing his mother, father, and sister on November 8, 2021, in the Dhaniakhali neighbourhood of the district.
• A POCSO court in Hooghly sentenced 42-year-old Ashok Singh, a daily wage worker, to death on January 17 of this year for luring a five-year-old girl with a packet of chips before raping and killing her on November 24 in the Gurap region of the district. The offender took advantage of the victim, his neighbour, who innocently trusted him, in what the court dubbed the "rarest of the rare" case.
• Following a 26-day investigation by the city police, Rajib Ghosh, a roadside eatery employee, was sentenced to death by a special POCSO court in Kolkata on Tuesday for the rape and attempted murder of a seven-month-old child in the Burtolla area of north Kolkata within 75 days of his arrest.

This is the latest in a string of blood-curling crimes. Since being tortured on November 30 of last year, the pavement-dwelling newborn has been fighting for her life in the intensive care unit at RG Kar Hospital.