Karnataka High Court confirms death penalty for three men in gang rape and murder of minor

The High Court of Karnataka has confirmed the death sentence for three men convicted of the gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl at a tile factory in Mangaluru, declaring the 2021 crime as a “rarest of rare” cases. 

A Division Bench comprising Justice H.P. Sandesh and Justice Venkatesh Naik T. in its February 4 verdict has dismissed the appeals of the convicts, identified as Jayban Adivasi and Mukesh Singh, both natives of Madhya Pradesh, and Manish Thirki, a native of Jharkhand, and upheld the capital punishment awarded by a Mangaluru special court for cases registered under the provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, in November 2024.

In tile factory

The incident occurred on November 21, 2021, on the premises of the tile factory where both the victim’s parents, who are natives of Jharkhand, and the accused persons worked.

The Bench found sufficient evidence to establish that the men, in a premeditated conspiracy, lured the child with sweets, took her to a secluded room on the tile factory premises, and subjected her to sequential rape and assault. And when she cried out due to bleeding injuries, Jayban Adivasi smothered her to death. Three of them then concealed her body in a drainage, the Bench noted.

The Bench affirmed the conviction by analysing a chain of circumstantial evidence, statements of eyewitnesses who had seen the victim girl with the three accused, conclusive DNA evidence linking the men to the crime, recovery of blood-stained clothing, and CCTV camera footage. The Bench noted the presence of chewed food particles in the victim’s teeth, corroborating the prosecution’s claim that she was lured with sweets.

Assessing the materials on record, the Bench said that “there are no mitigating circumstances favouring the accused to reduce the sentence, since it is a gangrape of a minor girl, who was aged about 7 years and 7 months at the time of commission of the offence”.

Message to society

“If a lesser sentence is imposed, it will give a wrong message to society and the public at large, and this act of subjecting the minor girl to satisfy their lust would be encouraged as such act has to be curbed with iron hands,” the Bench observed. 

The trial against another man, Munim Singh, a resident of Madhya Pradesh, who is arraigned as accused number-4 in the case, is pending as he absconded after obtaining bail from Mangaluru court before trial began.