West Bengal man sentenced to death for raping, murdering 14-year-old daughter | Kolkata

Kolkata: A court in Bengal’s West Burdwan district sentenced a 42-year-old man to death on Wednesday for raping and murdering his 14-year-old daughter in May last year, lawyers who attended the hearing said.

“The accused was sentenced by judge Suparna Bandopadhyay under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (Pocso),” Somnath Chattoraj, the public prosecutor, said.

The girl was strangled to death at her home on May 13 last year. Her mother, who discovered the body the next morning, lodged a police complaint.

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The postmortem confirmed that she was raped before being murdered, the lawyer said. “Police found the rope with which he strangulated his daughter after raping her. The pattern of strands in the rope matched with the deep marks found on the victim’s neck,” Chattoraj added.

The death sentence follows a series of similar verdicts passed by district judges in West Bengal in recent months.

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A court in north Bengal’s Jalpaiguri district on July 10 sentenced three men to death for the gang rape and murder of a Class 10 student in 2020. The 15-year-old victim was a madrasah student. The accused, who were aged between 20 and 27 during the crime, used to work at an automobile garage. The victim knew all of them.

The same Jalpaiguri court on June 11 sentenced a 31-year-old man to death for raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl in the Dhupguri area in 2023. The victim went missing in September 2023. Days later, her body was found floating in the Dudwa river. In this case, too, the convict knew the victim and her parents.