A court in Alipore on Thursday pronounced the death sentence to a 32-year-old man accused of kidnapping, raping and murdering a seven-year-old girl in Tiljala in 2023.

The special Pocso (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) court called it the rarest of rare crimes.

The body of the child was found in a gunny bag behind a cooking gas cylinder in her neighbour’s apartment hours after she stepped out of her home in a multi-storeyed building.

The accused, Alok Kumar, was subsequently arrested. He allegedly kept the body for disposal at night, police said.

Until the body was found, Kumar had joined the neighbourhood team searching for the missing girl.

Investigations revealed the accused had dragged the girl into his flat, gagged her and tied her hands before sexually assaulting her. He had switched on the radio at a loud volume to ensure neighbours could not hear her, an officer said.

“The victim was... not in a position to defend herself,” said Sudipto Bhattacharya, the special Pocso court judge.

The girl’s family lived on the second-floor of a multi-storey building in Tiljala, to Calcutta’s east.

On March 26, 2023, she stepped out of home around 8am after her mother asked her to fetch a packet of milk from the local market and drop the garbage bag in the bin, the police said. When the girl did not return after nearly three hours, the family went to the Tiljala police station and lodged a missing complaint.

A police team was sent to the locality and the cops went through CCTV footage from the cameras in the market and the building where the family lived. From the footage, the police learnt that the child had returned to the building after dropping the garbage bag.

Subsequently, a search was carried out in the whole building, including the flat of the convict from whose kitchen the body of the seven-year-old girl was recovered.

Violent protests rocked parts of Tiljala soon after. The impact was even felt across pockets of Park Circus. Cars were torched, a police station was vandalised, traffic came to a halt and railway services were affected.

The public prosecutor told the court on Thursday that the child’s hands were tied and her mouth gagged during the assault. There were more than 26 wounds on the body. The head was struck with a hammer.

“The child made desperate attempts to free herself and bit the accused in the hand. But she was overpowered,” the public prosecutor said. “The child was brutally murdered.”

The judge found Kumar guilty on the charges of rape, murder and under the Pocso Act.