New Delhi, February 24 A Delhi court on Tuesday convicted a man for sodomizing and murdering a 11-year-old boy in 2019, stating that the prosecution had proven the charges against him beyond any reasonable doubt.
The arguments regarding the sentence will be heard on a later date.
Additional Sessions Judge Amit Sahrawat was hearing the case against the accused, Karamvir Singh alias Lala, against whom a case was registered by the Narela police station for the penal offences of murder, committing unnatural sexual offences, and kidnapping, besides under Section 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the POCSO Act.
Special public prosecutor Aditya Kumar told the court that the accused, on January 2, 2019, took the victim to an isolated place near a railway line, where he first committed unnatural sexual offences and then murdered the minor.
He said that the accused's disclosure of the location of the dead body, recovery of clothes and a knife on his behalf, CCTV footage, and the FSL report had conclusively proven the prosecution's case beyond any reasonable doubt.
In a 49-page order, the court said that the prosecution had proven the foundational facts of the case beyond any reasonable doubt.
It said that the victim's father and maternal uncle were reliable witnesses; the accused and the deceased were seen together sometime before the incident; the dead body was recovered based on information provided by the accused; and therefore, the accused had information about the location of the dead body.
The court said that the trousers seized by the investigating officer (IO) from the accused at the time of his arrest had blood stains from the deceased; the jacket and scarf or gamchha recovered by the IO at the instance of the accused had blood from the deceased; the murder weapon, a knife recovered at the instance of the accused, had blood from the deceased, and there was semen from the accused in the anal region of the deceased.
It said, "There is a complete chain of events, whereby firstly, the accused took the deceased child to the shop of a confectioner, where the accused made the deceased child eat a samosa, and then the accused took him to a dilapidated building, i.e., the spot near the Narela railway station, and when he was taking the deceased, they were both captured on CCTV footage."
The court said that thereafter, "the accused committed penetrative sexual assault on the deceased in the anal region, which has been proven by the presence of injury and the accused's semen, and then he slit the child's throat."
"All these facts have been conclusively proven by the prosecution beyond any reasonable doubt, and there is no missing link in this chain of events. The entire chain of circumstantial evidence is complete," the court said.
It said that from the analysis of the facts, the only hypothesis that could be drawn is that the accused took away or kidnapped the deceased, committed penetrative sexual assault, and subsequently caused the child's death.
"It has been concluded that the accused, Karamvir Singh alias Lala, is guilty of the offences of kidnapping, unnatural sexual offence (carnal intercourse), aggravated penetrative sexual assault, and murder…," the court said, convicting him under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and under the POCSO provision.
