A special court under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act in Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal, on Thursday sentenced three men to death for the 2020 abduction, gangrape, and murder of a 16-year-old madrasa student.
The convicts—Rahaman Ali, Jamirul, and Tamirul—were found guilty of the heinous crime that shocked the region nearly five years ago.
Judge Rintu Sur delivered the sentence a day after convicting the trio, based on evidence from 27 witnesses. The court observed that the case qualified as a ‘rarest of the rare’ instance, meriting capital punishment by hanging.
The incident occurred in the Rajgunj police station area of Jalpaiguri in August 2020. The victim’s family had filed a missing person report after the Class 10 student failed to return home. Days later, her partially decomposed body was discovered in an under-construction septic tank near one of the accused’s residences.
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According to the police, the convicts—all aged between 30 and 35 and residents of neighbouring villages—confessed to abducting the girl on August 10, 2020. They took her to multiple locations, including local hotels, where she was repeatedly raped. She was later strangled and her body dumped in an attempt to destroy evidence.
“This verdict, where all three accused were convicted and sentenced to death, is unprecedented in the history of Jalpaiguri district,” government pleader Debashish Dutta told reporters following the court’s decision.
