BHOPAL: The Gwalior bench of Madhya Pradesh high court Friday commuted the death sentence of a man, convicted of raping and murdering a 9-year-old girl, to life imprisonment, holding that while the crime was “heinous”, it did not warrant capital punishment as the case did not fit the criteria to be adjudged “rarest of rare”.A division bench of justices GS Ahluwalia and Anuradha Shukla upheld the conviction of Kallu Rathore by the trial court under IPC sections 302, 366, and 376(AB), besides provisions of Pocso Act, but converted the death sentence into imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life.Setting aside the lower court order, the two-judge bench said, “The crime is not of such a nature that it should be punished with the death sentence.”The bench observed that although the victim was a “helpless child who was lured away by a trusted relative”, the prosecution could not establish the circumstances that justified the death penalty.It noted that “no previous criminal antecedents of the appellant have been proved” and he was “also not proved a menace, threat or danger to the society or community”.The case came to light in Gwalior in Feb 2022. According to the prosecution, the mantook the child out on the pretext of buying her an ice cream.As hours ticked by and she did not return, her family began a search and later lodged a missing person report. The girl was found dead near a railway crossing.The HC bench upheld the conviction by the trial court, relying on a combination of CCTV footage, forensic evidence and circumstantial evidence.During the hearing on a plea challenging the conviction and death sentence, the bench viewed the footage and observed that it showed “a man with a clearly visible face… going along with a girl”, rejecting the argument put forward by the defence that the recording was unclear.The court also relied on DNA evidence, observing that the “Y-DNA profile recovered from the slides and swab of the victim matched the Y-DNA profile obtained from the blood sample of the appellant”.It found no “infirmity in the collection, custody or transfer of the samples”, holding that the forensic evidence firmly corroborated the prosecution’s case.Rejecting the defence’s contention that the prosecution relied only on the “last seen” theory, the bench said the conviction rested on a complete chain of evidence comprising witness testimony, electronic evidence, and the accused’s conduct.
