A court in Uttar Pradesh's Hathras district has sentenced two men to 21 years' jail convicting them of raping and impregnating an 11-year-old girl, an official of the police department said on Saturday.
The court also imposed a penalty of Rs 51,000 each against the accused, who were 18 and 19 years of age at the time of the incident, and lived in the same building as the girl did, the officials said.
A case was lodged at the Hathras Kotwali on February 12, 2019 on the complaint of the mother of the girl. The mother had alleged that the girl was raped by the accused who lived in the same building as they did after which an FIR was lodged and the two men were arrested, a Hathras Police spokesperson said. The rape came to light after the girl complained of a stomach ache and her mother took her to a doctor, who confirmed she was pregnant.
When she was asked about it by her mother, the girl said that two men living upstairs had taken her to the terrace of the building three-to-four months ago and forced themselves on her, according to a court record.
Police arrested the accused on February 13, 2019 who moved a bail application after three months of stay in the jail. Additional District and Sessions Judge and special judge (POCSO court) Ashish Jain rejected their bail plea on May 31, 2019, terming the incident a very serious and despicable act.
The FIR was lodged under Indian Penal Code sections 376-D (gangrape) and 506 (criminal intimidation), and also under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the spokesperson said.
Effective arguments were presented before the court by prosecution officer Krishna Kumar Sharma while forensic evidence and other material related to the case were produced timely in the court along with the charge-sheet under supervision of Superintendent of Police Vineet Jaiswal, the spokesperson said.
On the same day of the court's order, Vineet Jaiswal, a 2014-batch IPS officer, was transferred to Amroha after a nearly two-year-long stint in Hathras in a minor state-level re-jig by the UP government.
PTI
