After a 23 day trial, the Indore Session Court today announced the death sentence for the accused in the Indore rape case. The accused Naveen Gadke raped and murdered a four month old girl in Madhya Pradesh last year. The Court sentenced the accused to death under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO.)
The special public prosecutor Akram Sheikh urged Judge Varsha Sharma to consider the case as the “rarest of the rare” and award the capital punished to the accused. Judge Sharma termed the crime as an inhumane act and said, “Such a small child who didn’t know anything other than crying was treated inhumanely.”
The accused Gadke made a wish before being hauled to prison. He said to the Court, “I just want to meet my mother and sister before being sent to jail.”
On the 20th of April, the minor girl was sleeping with her parents on the street outside the Rajwada Fort in Indore. The girl’s parents were homeless and sold balloons for a living. Naveen Gadke was known to the family and was sleeping next to them on the night of the incident.
Gadke kidnapped the sleeping baby early in the morning and raped her in an empty plot. The baby girl started crying and to shut her up the accused killed the child. A shopkeeper spotted the girl’s body hours later and called the police.
During the investigation, the police found CCTV footage of Naveen Gadke carrying the girl to the empty plot. Gadke who is the cousin of the girl’s mother was arrested on the same day. Locals were enraged and attacked Gadke while he was being taken to Court.
