New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a case from Rajasthan for suspending 10 years of jail sentence awarded to an aged person for sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl child in 2011.
The advance age of a convict in a heinous crime cannot be a ground for awarding a lesser sentence, the vacation Bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and Ajay Rastogi said, wondering why convict Laxminaryan alias Chhotu Maharaj was not awarded the life sentence but just 10 years of jail for such a heinous crime.
Noting that the age of the convict should not have been the ground to reduce the life sentence to 10 years, Justice Banerjee said it should have been 20 years in such a case.
She noted from the medical report on how the minor child was bleeding. Justice Rastogi also agreed that "medical details of the victim girl are shocking."
"Absolutely not," the court said when the convict’s lawyer Sunil Kumar Jha pleaded to suspend the sentence since he has already undergone four years of incarceration and he would be completing rest of the sentence by the time the High Court decides his appeal. The court said it has gone through the records and find no need to interfere.
