Men gets lifer for sodomising, killing boy in 2018

New Delhi, Mar 12 (PTI) A Delhi court has convicted a man in a case of sodomy and murder of a 10-year-old boy in 2018 and sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Additional sessions judge Susheel Bala Dagar said death penalty wasn't warranted owing to the possibility of the convict's reformation and the case didn't fall in the rarest of rare category.

"The present case is not a case where there is no possibility of reformation. The case does not fall in the category of rarest of rare cases," it held.

Referring to the "two-fold" nature of the crime, the court said, "He kidnapped the innocent child, brutally sodomised and murdered the child by strangulating him." The court heard the arguments on sentencing against the 42-year-old man after convicting him under the provisions of the IPC and the POCSO Act.

Additional public prosecutor Yogita Kaushik Dahiya sought the maximum punishment for the convict saying he killed the child after satisfying his lust on March 24, 2018.

On March 11, the court sentenced him under Section 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the POCSO Act aside from Sections 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) and 363 (kidnapping) of IPC for murdering and dumping his body in a drain.

The man was then sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder and awarded another life sentence for rape separately.

All sentences were, however, ordered to run concurrently.

"The deceased’s family belongs to an economically marginalised section of the society and they were subjected to immense pain and suffering not only due to the loss of their child but also due to continuous social stigma," the court said.

The order said the parents' irreparable loss could not be quantified and awarded them Rs 10.5 lakh in compensation. PTI MNR AMK