A man, who was awarded death sentence by a local court in Bhopal for raping and murdering a 16-year-old girl, was acquitted by the Madhya Pradesh High Court for lack of evidence against him.
The decision to acquit Mohammad Mustafa in the case was pronounced yesterday by a bench of Justice A K Shrivastava.
The bench also conveyed its displeasure to the police for not probing the case properly as one more accused was already acquitted by the lower court.
According to the prosecution, Mustafa, a mechanic, had befriended the minor girl.
On September 28 in 2012, he took the girl in a car along with her brother. Later, he gave Rs 50 to her brother and asked him to get down at some place and later took the girl to his garage and allegedly raped her there, it said.
He then killed the girl fearing that she might reveal the incident to her police constable father, and disposed of the body in the forest area near Budhni town with help of his friend Mohammad Aziz, the prosecution had claimed.
When the girl did not return home, her parents reported the matter to the police. Her brother told the police that Mustafa had taken her in a car, following which her body was recovered from the forest area.
Enraged people had targeted his garage and set it on fire and later staged a road-blockade.
Later, police arrested Mustafa for raping and murdering the girl and Aziz for destructing evidences.
However, district court judge Saeeda Bano acquitted Aziz for lack of evidence against him and awarded capital punishment to Mustafa.
But when the case was referred to the High Court, it acquitted Mustafa for lack of sufficient evidence against him and rapped the local police for not probing the case in a proper manner.
