A special POCSO court in Cuttack, Odisha has awarded the death penalty to 26-year-old Mohammad Mustaq yesterday. Mustaq had brutally raped and killed a 6-year-old girl in Salepur’s Jagannathpur village last year.
Additional District and special POCSO court judge Vandana Kar convicted Mustaq under sections 302(murder), 363, 376 a-b of the IPC and section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. As per the provisions in the strict POCSO amendments last year, Mustaq was awarded the death penalty yesterday.
As per reports, this is the fourth death penalty awarded in Odisha after the central government amended the POCSO Act to include the death penalty for rapists of children under 12 years.
On the evening of 21 April 2018, the 6-year-old victim was found abandoned in an extremely critical condition in the premises of a school in Salepur’s Jagannathpur village. She was found unconscious and bleeding profusely from her head, neck, chest, and private parts.
The accused Mohammad Mustak, who was from the same village, had lured the girl with the promise of giving chocolates and had raped her brutally. in an attempt to kill her after the act, he had allegedly smashed her head multiple times and strangulated her. The girl was comatose and on a ventilator for 8 days where all attempts to revive her had failed. After suffering a massive cardiac arrest, the little victim had succumbed to her injuries on April 29th at the SCB medical college last year.
The criminal was reportedly known to the girl’s family. In an attempt to hide his crime, he had also joined the search for the girl when her family informed the villagers that she had not returned home after going to buy biscuits from a nearby shop. The police had filed a charge sheet in the case in a record 19-days.
