Mumbai: A special POCSO court on Wednesday awarded death penalty to a 25-year-old transgender, accused of raping and killing a three-month-old girl in 2021, after her family expressed their inability to pay money and give gifts for blessing the newborn child.
The court found her guilty on charges of rape, murder, kidnapping, destruction of evidence of the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
The court said that the crime was pre-planned and would “send a chill down the spine of every parent of a girl child, especially in a poor vicinity.”
Special Judge Aditee Kadam, while awarding death sentence in her order, said, “Life sentence is a rule, and death sentence is an exception, only to be awarded in the rarest of rare cases. This crime smacks of the degradation of a girl child, depravity, and perversity. The barbaric and inhuman manner in which the offence was committed has made it the ‘rarest of rare case’.”
“The accused had planned in advance to commit the crime and executed it in a meticulous manner,” the judge said, calling it a “cold-blooded murder.”
According to the prosecutor, the transgender accused approached the family of the girl for a gift after the girl child was born, as is customary of some members of the transgender community. However, the family declined to give anything.
The accused then developed a grudge against the family. Later, the accused kidnapped the infant when her family members were asleep, raped her and drowned her in the nearby creek.
Accused and her co-accused were later arrested by the Cuff Parade police station, who confessed to the crime.
The court acquitted the co-accused of all charges for lack of evidence against him.