A special women's court here today sentenced a 25-year-old man to life imprisonment for raping and murdering an eight-year-old girl in suburban Kurla in 2010 but spared him the noose saying the case does not fall under the rarest of rare category.
Special judge Vrushali Joshi, who had convicted Javed Sheikh on September 5 for the crime, handed him life term while rejecting the prosecution's demand for death saying the case does not fall under the "rarest of the rare category", the criterion for capital punishment.
"The court has sentenced Javed Sheikh to life on the charges of kidnapping, rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in June 2010," Special Public Prosecutor Pradeep Gharat said.
He told reporters outside the court that the sentence implies that the convict would have to spend his life in jail till his death.
"The motive for committing murder is of committing rape on the victim (sic). The postmortem report proves that the accused had committed forcible sexual intercourse with the child, whose organs were not even developed," the judge noted.
The court also observed that Sheikh "ravished" the minor girl inhumanly and injuries on her private part prove the dastardly act of the accused.
The judge also took into consideration factors like age of the accused who was a teenager when arrested five years back on July 1, 2010 and that there was no complaint against him by jail authorities, while prescribing the life imprisonment.
The court imposed a fine of Rs 30,000 on Sheikh.
After Sheikh was explained about the quantum of sentence, he told the court that he was innocent.
The prosecution examined 26 witnesses while the defence four witnesses during the trial.
The girl's body was found inside an unoccupied shanty in Nehru Nagar's Vatsalatai Nagar slum on June 19, 2010, after the neighbours complained of foul smell. The girl had gone missing on June 5 that year.
The medical report confirmed that the minor had been raped following which Sheikh, an employee of a local cable operator, was arrested.
The police had in August 2010 filed a 325-page charge sheet against Sheikh which consisted of statements of around 45 witnesses, medical reports, forensic reports and a DNA test report.
