Death Penalty News

KOLKATA: A Pocso court in the city on Tuesday sentenced a 34-year-old man to death for raping a seven-month-old infant on Nov 30 last year, leaving her fighting for life. The court termed the case "rarest of rare". The court also awarded compensation of Rs 10 lakh to the survivor. The sentencing came a day after Rajib Ghosh (also known as Gobra) was found guilty of the crime. "This is a rarest of rare case. There cannot be any other punishment that the court can think of," judge Indrila Mukhopadhyay Mitra said, reading out the verdict.

The three-year-old was also “sexually tortured” at the hands of the couple who believed in superstition, police said. A local court in West Bengal’s Purulia district has handed the death penalty to two convicts in the 2017 needle murder case wherein a three-year-old girl was subjected to physical and sexual torture.  The victim’s mother and her lover - Sanatan Thakur - were sentenced to death on Tuesday after the trial went on for four years. The three-year-old had died during treatment in July 2017 when the doctors discovered seven needles inside her body. The couple decided to kill the girl as they considered her an “obstacle to their relationship”, The Indian Express reported.  The three-year-old was also “sexually tortured” at the hands of the couple who, according to police, believed in superstition. Doctors had extracted seven four-inch needles from her body, including her private parts.  Police suspected the needles were inserted as part of “Tantric rituals” by the...