SC rejects review plea of 55-yr-old man, death penalty awarded for raping 8-yr-old

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a review petition of a 55-year-old man and sent him to gallows for raping and stoning to death a four-year-old girl in 2008.

A bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra said "no case is made out" and dismissed the review petition.

The bench, which also comprised Justices R F Nariman and U U Lalit, said "the aggravating circumstances and the barbaric manner in which the four-year-old was killed, clearly outweigh the mitigating circumstances."

The convict is currently lodged in Nagpur jail. The court had on November 26, 2014 upheld the trial court as well as Bombay High Court judgements awarding death sentence to Maharashtra resident Vasanta Sampat Dupare in the 2008 rape-cum-murder case of Nagpur.

The apex court had on July 14 last year agreed to examine the plea of Dupare, who had claimed he was not accorded a fair chance to put forth his arguments by the trial court which sentenced him to death.

While upholding death penalty awarded to the convict, the top court had said that the rape of a minor girl child is nothing but "a monstrous burial of her dignity in darkness."

The court had referred to the sequence of events in the case and said that the convict, who was a neighbour, lured the girl, raped her and then battered her to death using two heavy stones.