District Sessions Judge Bibhu Prasad Routray ordered that Pradip Dalai be hanged till death for mercilessly killing the 7-year-old old girl and rigorous life imprisonment for raping her.
Dalai (27), a driver, was also convicted for tampering with evidence (section 201) and kidnapping (section 366) under the IPC.
The court had convicted the man October 1 and pronounced the death sentence today.
The girl, a standard two student, was playing with her friends on September 2 afternoon when Pradip lured her away on the promise of treating her to chowmein.
When the girl who called Pradip, a father of two, 'mamu' (maternal uncle) did not return even after night fall her family members launched a search and found her body in a bush in the early hours of the next day.
The girl, daughter of a daily wage earner, was found to have been raped and then strangulated during autopsy.
Pradip was arrested and forwarded to court the next day and chargesheeted within seven days.
Pradip is the sixth person to be awarded the death sentence in Odisha's Sambalpur district in 58 years. One person was awarded capital punishment in 1954, followed by two in 1993 and another two in 2009. So far only the 1954 death sentence has been executed.
Dhananjoy Chatterjee was the last man to have been hanged to death in the country in 2004. He too was charged for raping and murdering a minor girl in Kolkata.
