A special court of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) in North Tripura on October 3 convicted two higher secondary level students and awarded death sentence for criminally assaulting a minor girl and murdering her in June 2019.
The convicts were students of class 11 and class 12 when they committed the crime.
Police had arrested them two days after the incident and both had confessed during interrogation that they had raped the girl before murdering her.
The court of special judge Angshuman Debbarma after a long trial awarded them death penalty based on the evidence submitted by the police and recording testimonies of as many as 41 witnesses. The Tripura court termed the incident as a ‘rarest of the rare’ crime while pronouncing the judgment.
According to details, a 6-year-old minor girl had gone missing from Padmapur in Northern town of Tripura’s Dharmanagar on the evening of June 17, 2019. The victim girl and her mother were staying next to one of the convict’s house. He was staying alone there as his teacher father lived with other family members in Kanchanpur.
The victim’s mother hails from Murticherra tea estate of Kailashahar and works as a domestic help. She went to work leaving her alone in the house. In the evening when she returned, she found her daughter missing. After searching at nearby places, she along with the accused went to police station late at night to file a missing diary.
The next morning villagers of Halflong tea estate saw the body of the girl lying in the drain and reported it to the police.
Police recovered the body and her mother identified it. Later, police picked up the accused suspecting him and during interrogation he admitted the crime and divulged the name of a friend.
The court convicted them under the Indian Penal Code sections 363, 376, 376D, and 302.
