New Delhi:
Manoharan, the man who raped a 10-year-old girl before murdering in Coimbatore in 2010, will be hanged, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday while dismissing his review plea. Manoharan and his accomplice had picked up the girl along with her brother while the siblings were on their way to the school. Later, they brutally raped the girl. To destroy any evidence, the due tried to kill the siblings by poisoning them. But when that failed they threw the siblings in a canal where they drowned. In a majority judgment of 2:1, a bench headed by Justice RF Nariman, said there are no grounds to review their verdict upholding the death penalty of convict Manoharan.
While Justices Nariman and Suryakant dismissed the review plea, Justice Sanjiv Khanna, who was also part of the three-judge bench, said he has a different view on the point of the sentence only. "In view of the majority judgment, the review petition stands dismissed in its entirety," the bench said.
On September 17, the top court had stayed Manoharan’s execution. A bench headed by Justice RF Nariman had stayed the execution of convict Manoharan till October 16, the next date of hearing. Manoharan was scheduled to be executed on September 20. The bench said that it is granting one last opportunity to convict to argue his review petition.
Earlier on August 1st, the Supreme Court had upheld the death penalty of Manoharan and said that the offence fell under the "rarest of rare" category. Manoharan’s accomplice Mohanakrishnan was later shot dead in an encounter.
In 2012, the Coimbatore Mahila court awarded a double death penalty and a triple life term to Manoharan. Manoharan had challenged this verdict in the Madras High Court, but the plea was dismissed by the court. In 2014, Manoharan had filed an appeal in the Supreme Court.
