A court here today awarded life imprisonment to a man for raping and murdering a minor girl.
Rewari District and Sessions judge Jagdeep Jain sentenced Pradeep to imprisonment for life. The court on April 21 held him guilty of raping and then strangling to death a 5-year-old girl of Thathetra Colony here on February 4.
The verdict has been pronounced by the sessions court in a time of less than three months.
The judge also sentenced Pradeep's brother Kuldeep and Kuldeep's associate Manish to imprisonment for four months, holding them guilty of concealing the truth from police.
According to the prosecution, both Pradeep and Kuldeep, residents of Uttarakhand, were employed in the electricity board and lived in the Board's colony in the vicinity of Thathetra Colony on the Rewari-Pataudi road here.
The girl was picked up from Thathetra Colony, taken to a nearby field where she was raped by Pradeep who subsequently strangled her to death on February 4.
Pradeep's brother Kuldeep and his associate Manish, who were familiar with the monstrous misdeed, continued to conceal it from the police.
The girl's body was recovered from there the next day by the police which registered a case of rape and murder and subsequently arrested the accused.
