Bhopal: Supreme Court (SC), on Friday, has stayed the execution of death penalty against a school teacher for raping a 4-year-old girl in June,2018 in Satna district. SC’s special bench headed by CJI Ranjan Gogoi passed the order. The bench also stayed the death warrant issued by a Satna court on February 4 against Mahendra Singh Gond.
His was scheduled to be executed on March 2 in Jabalpur jail. Advocate Pragati Nikhara, member of standing counsel, New Delhi, confirmed it. The girl was so brutally assaulted that she had to spend months in AIIMS-Delhi to get her intestines realigned. After raping her, the rapist had dumped her in a jungle, taking her to be dead.
Her kin found her in the wee hour by that time was found barely alive. The state government immediately had intervened and airlifted her to Delhi. The MP High Court had on January 25 confirmed the death sentence, awarded to Gond, by the trial court. The trial court had convicted the school teacher on September 19, 2018 and had sentenced Gond to death under the recently-introduced Section 376(a)(b) of IPC (raping a minor under 12 years of age).
This provision was incorporated into IPC last year, through Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2018. Advocate (member of standing counsel) Pragati Nikhara said, “Supreme Court has stayed the death penalty as well as death warrant against accused school teacher Mahendra Singh Gond. Now the court will access and examine the every aspect in the case.”
