RAJKOT: A court in Gujarat's Rajkot district on Monday sentenced to death a man accused of brutally killing a minor girl by stabbing her 34 times for rejecting his proposal.
The court of additional district and sessions judge R R Chaudhary at Jetpur sentenced to death Jayesh Sarvaiya (26) for stabbing a Class 11 student 34 times for refusing to enter into a relationship with him.
The accused had also injured the girl's brother who had tried to intervene during the attack that took place in March 2021.
The court held that this was a "rarest of the rare case" as per the definition given by the Supreme Court in the Nirbhaya case, special public prosecutor Janak Patel said.
Sarvaiya was booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
"The court awarded the death sentence and imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on the accused under section 302 of the IPC...It was a kind of murder that shook the entire community and hence, was taken seriously," Patel said.
The convict has been given a month's time to make an appeal in the high court, he said.
The accused and the victim were residents of Jetalsar village in Jetpur taluka of the district.
The man had been harassing the victim, and on March 16, 2021, he went to her house with a proposal. Angered by her refusal, Sarvaiya thrashed the victim and stabbed her multiple times outside her house when she tried to escape.
Shocked by the brutality of the killing, locals had demanded that the accused be given capital punishment and even observed a bandh and took out a protest march.