Verdict on Sat in 5-year-old girl's rape case which was overshadowed by Nirbhaya case

Just four months after the Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case in December 2012, another gruesome gang rape of a five-year old girl in the national capital had taken place which was overshadowed.

The sensational 2013 case of gang rape of a five-year-old girl in east Delhi's Gandhi Nagar area is likely to come to an end after six years as a Delhi court is likely to pronounce its judgement in the case on Saturday.

Additional Sessions Judge Naresh Kumar Malhotra had on Wednesday deferred the verdict as the judgement which is likely to be a lengthy one was not ready, said a lawyer privy to the matter.

 

While in the Nirbhaya case, a trial court had convicted and awarded death penalty to the four convicts in a span of 10 months, it took six years, seven judges and 57 prosecution witnesses to complete the trial in the 2013 gang rape case.

In the five-year old girl's gang rape case, the charge sheet was filed by the Delhi police on May 24, 2013 against the two accused -- Manoj Shah and Pradeep Kumar, and charges were framed against them by the court on July 11 the same year, it took more than five years to complete recording of the statement of 57 prosecution witnesses in a Protection of Children against Sexual Offences (POCSO) court.

The POCSO court recorded the statements of the prosecution witnesses from July 24, 2013 to October 26, 2018.

Two persons -- Manoj Shah and Pradeep Kumar-- are accused of allegedly raping the girl and shoving off objects in her private parts on April 15, 2013.

Both the accused, currently in judicial custody, had fled after allegedly committing the crime, leaving the victim at Manoj's room believing her to be dead. The child was rescued 40 hours later on April 17, 2013.

Manoj and Pradeep were later arrested by Delhi police separately from Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga in Bihar respectively in 2013.

The trial saw an interesting turn in 2014 when one of the accused, Pradeep, had moved the court claiming he was a juvenile at the time of his arrest.

The trial court took three years to decide his application of juvenility and on April 12, 2017, transferred the case to Juvenile Justice Board (JJB). Pradeep was granted bail by the JJB in June.

Following this, the mother of the rape survivor moved the Delhi High Court against the trial court's order declaring Pradeep to be a juvenile.

The high court had in 2018 declared that Pradeep was not a juvenile and sent him to trial before the sessions court.

It also took almost a year for the POCSO court to complete recording of the statement of both the accused, from December 5, 2018 to September 25, 2019, following which the prosecution and the defence counsel completed their final arguments in December last year.

The court had framed charges of raping a minor, unnatural offence, kidnapping, attempt to murder, destruction of evidence and wrongful confinement with common intention under the IPC against the two accused.

It had also framed charges of aggravated sexual assault under the POCSO Act which entails a maximum punishment of life term.

Charges of rape and unnatural offence were slapped on the two accused by the court as these two sections were not invoked by the police in its charge sheet.

The police had said some foreign materials -- three pieces of a candle and one hair oil bottle -- were taken out from the body of the victim, which was also proved by doctors during recording of their statements in the court.

As the anger over the gruesome rape spilled onto the capital's streets, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said that collective efforts were needed to root out such "depravity" from society.

"The gruesome assault on a little child a few days back reminds us of the need to work collectively to root out this sort of depravity from our society," Singh had said.

The city had witnessed outraged students and women staging demonstrations at India Gate, Police Headquarters and near the residences of the then Prime Minister Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Placard-wielding protesters had also gathered at AIIMS, where the girl was undergoing treatment, and burnt the effigy of then Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar, demanding his sacking.