Rape of an innocent child was destruction and devastation of social trust-Supreme Court

Rape of a child as “an anathema to the social balance” and an offender as a “menace to the society”, the Supreme Court Wednesday handed down death penalty to a man, convicted of raping and murdering a four-year-old girl in 2008.

A bench led by Justice Dipak Misra threw out the appeal of Vasanta Sampat Dupare, 51, and held that the convict deserved nothing but the capital punishment for exhibiting the “gratification of pervert lust and brutish carnality,” and making an infant girl “the prey of such degradation and depravity”.

It was last in 2012 when the court had upheld the death penalty to a convict in a rape and murder case. This case also involved commission of crime against a minor.

Dupare had in April 2008 raped and killed the minor after luring her to have chocolates in Nagpur, Maharashtra. He had crushed her head with heavy stones and hid her body. Testimonies of various witnesses along with other scientific and circumstantial evidence had brought home the guilt of the accused.

Discussing the quantum of punishment, the bench, also comprising Justices Rohinton F Nariman and U U Lalit, said the entire case was replete with aggravating circumstances and that there was nothing on record to mitigate the gravity of the offence or to suggest that Dupare could be reformed.

“The rape of a minor girl child is nothing but a monstrous burial of her dignity in the darkness. It is a crime against the holy body of a girl child and the soul of the society and such a crime is aggravated by the manner in which it has been committed. The nature of the crime and the manner in which it has been committed speak about its uncommonness. The crime speaks of depravity, degradation and uncommonality. It is diabolical and barbaric,” held the court.

Underlining the manner in which Dupare took the victim away and killed her in cold blood after raping her, it said there was no doubt that the crime was committed in an inhuman manner and the convict deserved punishment befitting the nature of the crime.

Sending Dupare to the gallows, the court noted that rape of an innocent child was not only betrayal of an individual trust but destruction and devastation of social trust.

“It is perversity in its enormity. It irrefutably invites the extreme abhorrence and indignation of the collective. It is an anathema to the social balance. In our view, it meets the test of rarest of the rare case and we unhesitatingly so hold,” said the bench.