The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the life sentence to a man from Uttar Pradesh for strangling to death a nine-year-old girl after a failed to rape her due to intervention of her five-year-old brother, emphasising that there could be no leniency in sentencing an accused for such horrendous act against a minor child.
The incident had happened in a village of UP on June 24, 1994 when convict Juginder Singh lured the girl to a seclude place unaware that her five-year-old brother was following them. As he attempted to rape her and she cried for help, the little boy ran to rescue the sister.
By the time some other people also rushed to the spot. Infuriated due to the intervention of the boy, Juginder strangulated his sister to death before the villagers apprehended him. Describing the incident as “horrendous”, a bench of Justices B.S. Chauhan and Dipak Misra upheld the Allahabad high court verdict awarding life term to Juginder, who was let off by the trial judge pointing out certain technical errors in prosecution case.
While criticising the trial judge for giving special emphasis to minor technical aspects and overlooking strong evidence, including the circumstantial evidence, the top court said “the cry of collective conscience has to be answered and respected and that is what high court exactly has done by converting the decision of acquittal to that of conviction and imposed the sentence as per law on the accused.”
“The case graphically exposes the inferior endowments of nature in the appellant who failed to ‘husband’ his passion and made an attempt to commit rape on a nine-year- ol girl and even her tears failed to have any impact on his emotion. Not an iota of compassion surfaced as if it had been ‘atrophied’ and eventually he pressed her neck, which caused instant death,” the top court observed.
The accused created a situation by which the girl believed in him as a co-villager and went with him in total innocence. “Rape or an attempt to rape is a crime not against an individual but it destroys the basic equilibrium of the social atmosphere. The death of the child is more horrendous. It is to be kept in mind that an offence against the body of a woman lowers her dignity and mars her reputation. It is said that one’s physical frame is his or her temple. No one has any right of its encroachment,” the SC said while dismissing Juginder’s appeal.