RAIPUR: A Special POCSO Court in Durg, Chhattisgarh awarded capital punishment to a man for the brutal rape and murder of his six-year-old niece on Friday.
The Additional Sessions Judge (Special POCSO Court), Anish Dubey, classified the horrific crime to the "rarest of rare" category, ordering that Somesh Yadav, 24, be hanged to death.
The incident unfolded on April 6, 2025, on the sacred festival of Ram Navami. The six-year-old girl, dressed up to attend a traditional Kanya Bhoj (ceremonial feast honouring young girls) at her grandmother's house. There, her uncle, Yadav, lured her to the terrace, subjected her to extreme sexual violence, and killed her.
In a calculated attempt to destroy evidence, Yadav dumped the barely breathing child inside a parked car of a local resident, Anurag Meshram.
Yadav then joined family search parties, pretending to look for the missing girl. When Meshram eventually discovered the child in the locked vehicle and raised an alarm, Yadav assaulted Meshram in a bid to divert suspicion onto him.
The post-mortem examinations revealed that the girl had suffered fatal heat shocks and suffocation inside the sweltering vehicle, with blisters proving she was still alive when abandoned in the vehicle.
As the trial commenced under Special POCSO Case No. 44/2025, the prosecution faced a massive hurdle as several crucial witnesses, related to the accused, turned hostile and retracted their statements.
The defense strongly argued that an uncle could never commit such a terrible act, relying on the fact that there were no eyewitnesses.
However, the relentless, scientific blueprint executed by the Durg District Special Investigation Police Team collapsed the defense.
The DNA profile obtained from biological stains matched the accused establishing sexual assault. CCTV, mobile tower dumps, and scene reconstruction established that the child never left the premises alive.
The Special Court convicted Yadav under Sections 5(m) & 5(n) read with 6(1) of the POCSO Act, 2012, along with Sections 103(1) (Murder), 65(2) (Rape of child under twelve), and 238(a) (Causing disappearance of evidence) of the BNS.