Satna: Clearing the decks for the first ever capital punishment under the new child rape law in the state, a court in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna has issued the death warrant to a schoolteacher for raping a four-year-old girl last year.
Unless the Supreme Court stays the execution, the convict, Mahendra Singh Gond, would be hanged at 5 am on March 2 at Jabalpur’s Central Jain.
Following the incident, the probe, filing of a chargesheet and pronouncement of the verdict all took place within seven months. The probe was completed in 81 days while the district court delivered the verdict within 47 days of proceedings.
A division bench of MP high court confirmed the death sentence on January 25, 2019, holding his crime to be “rarest of rare”.
The additional district and sessions judge Dinesh Sharma on Monday issued the death warrant for the culprit.
Satna police had arrested the 27-year-old convict on charges of abducting and raping a four-year-old girl on July 1 in Parsamniya area of the district.
Seeing the critical condition of the girl after the sexual assault, Satna collector Mukesh Shukla had ensured that the girl is airlifted to AIIMS, New Delhi, following orders from the then chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. The child was assaulted so brutally that she had to spend months in AIIMS to get her intestines realigned.
On September 19, 2018, the additional district and sessions court had found Gond guilty and sentenced him to death and later the high court rejected an appeal from the contractual teacher and upheld the verdict from the lower court on Jan 25, 2019. After the high court’s confirmation, Satna district and sessions court issued the “execution warrant” against Gond.
The convict still has the option of moving the SC and file a mercy petition with the President of India against his death sentence.
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