The court had on January 18 convicted Manoj Shah and Pradeep Kumar. (Photo Credit: Representational Image)
New Delhi:
Delhi Court on Thursday sentenced two men to 20 years in jail for gang rape of a 5-year-old in 2013. Delhi court also granted Rs 11 lakh compensation to survivor in the case. Convicts Manoj Shah and Pradeep Kumar were on trial for raping a minor girl at a rented accommodation in East Delhi's Gandhi Nagar area in April 2013.
The court had on January 18 convicted Manoj Shah and Pradeep Kumar. In the gruesome incident at Gandhi Nagar on April 15, 2013, the convicts had shoved objects in the victim's private parts and abandoned her in a room, believing she was dead. The child was rescued 40 hours later on April 17. Shah and Kumar were arrested from Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga in Bihar on April 20 and April 22 in 2013, respectively.
The police had said some foreign materials -- three pieces of a candle and one hair oil bottle -- were taken out from the body of the victim, which was also proved by doctors during recording of their statements in the court.
In an over 100-page judgment, Additional Sessions Judge Naresh Kumar Malhotra had said: "In our society, minor girls are worshipped as a goddess on certain occasions, but in the present case, the victim child, who was aged about five years at time of incident, had experienced exceptional depravity and extreme brutality."
"The crime against the victim was committed in a most grotesque and revolting manner and the collective conscience of the community was shaken," the court had said.
The incident took place four months after the gangrape and murder of a 23-year-old paramedic student, who came to be known as Nirbhaya.
The court had convicted Shah and Kumar under sections 363 (kidnapping), 342 (wrongful confinement), 201 (disappearance of evidence), 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 376 (2) (gang rape), 377 (unnatural offence) and 34 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the POCSO Act.
