The High Court upheld the conviction under various sections of the IPC and the POCSO Act, affirming the man’s guilt (image//mphc.gov.in)

Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh: The Madhya Pradesh High Court commuted the death sentence of a 20-year-old man from a Scheduled Tribe (ST) community, convicted of raping a four-year-old girl, to life imprisonment. The verdict, delivered on Thursday by a division bench of Justices Vivek Agarwal and Devnarayan Mishra, acknowledged the act was undeniably brutal but was not executed with brutality, cited LiveLaw. 

The trial court had earlier sentenced the man to death, stating that the assault had left the child permanently disabled. However, the High Court disagreed with this assessment, noting the absence of conclusive medical evidence to support claims of lifelong disability. 

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According to the prosecution, the incident took place when the accused entered the house of the minor at night, abducted her, and raped her. He allegedly believed the child had died and left her unconscious in a remote orchard so she couldn’t be found. The 4-year-old was later found and survived the attack.  

The High Court upheld the conviction under various sections of the IPC and the POCSO Act, affirming the man’s guilt. However, it observed that while the act was “undeniably brutal,” it was not executed with “brutality” in the legal sense required to justify capital punishment. 

The court took into account the convict’s age, lack of formal education, tribal background, and absence of any prior criminal record. “The appellant is a youth of a tribal community aged about 20 years. There is no report that he has previously committed any such type of offence,” the bench noted. 

The court also criticised the reliance of the trial court on a single doctor’s testimony, which, it held, failed to specify the nature or extent of any permanent injury. 

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The verdict referenced Supreme Court precedents that emphasise the rare nature of cases meriting the death penalty, concluding that this was not one of them.  

The convict will now serve life imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life.