JOIN USA lower court in Odisha’s Sambalpur district on Monday sentenced a 30-year-old man to death for kidnapping, rape and subsequently murdering a seven-year-old girl.
The incident which took place in Sambalpur last month had sent shockwaves in the entire district. The court convicted the man, Pradip Dalai, a lorry driver on October 1 and the quick trial and subsequent conviction within a period of less than a month of the incident was appreciated by all.
The court had announced that it would pass the sentence on October 3 but was subsequently deferred till Monday.
On September 2, Dalai who was known to the victim’s family kidnapped the little girl while she was playing with her friends by luring her with a “chowmein”.
He then took the class two student to an isolated place and rapped her. He then killed the girl after she threatened that she would reveal the matter to her parents. Her dead body was recovered from a bush the next day.
“The court thought the case to be a rarest of the rare one and therefore awarded the man the death penalty,” public prosecutor in the case, Artatrana Mishra, said.
Sambalpur Additional Superintendent of Police Dilip Kumar Deo said that the local police had taken up the case as a challenge and completed investigation early.
“We had finished the investigation and filed the charge sheet with concrete evidence just within five days,” he said.