A 25-year-old man from Kollam in Kerala, was on Wednesday, 17 July, awarded three life terms, apart from 26 years of rigorous imprisonment for the rape and murder of his niece in 2017, PTI reported.
The judgment was delivered by a POCSO court in Kollam by Judge E Baju, who had earlier on Tuesday convicted Rajesh for a number of crimes, including murder, rape, unnatural sex, abduction and showing disrespect to a dead body, India Today reported.
Rajesh, the convict, used to live in the same house as the minor victim, along with her family in Anchal, Kerala. The day of the incident, Rajesh allegedly assured the girl’s grandmother that he would drop her to her tuition class, but ended up taking the child to a rubber plantation 16 kilometres away to suffocate, rape and ultimately abandon the body there.
Following a manhunt, Rajesh was subsequently nabbed from a forest at Kulathupuzha, where he had been hiding.
(With inputs from PTI and India Today)
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