Sirsa, Haryana:
Over one year after he raped a 75-year-old woman and then strangled her to death, a man was condemned to the gallows by a court in Haryana's Sirsa town on Tuesday.
In a historic judgment, Additional Sessions Judge Neelima Shangla termed the case as "rarest of the rare" and awarded death sentence to Nikka Singh, 22, for the rape and murder of Gurdev Kaur.
The incident took place in February last year in Sanwat Khera village of this district, 300 kilometer from Chandigarh.
According to police, the accused waylaid the old woman, who had ventured out of her house for a walk in the afternoon, near some fields. He first raped the victim by gagging her mouth with her shawl and then murdered her by strangling her with her dupatta.
When the old woman did not return, her family went looking for her and found her body in the fields. Some villagers had seen the accused near the same spot earlier and he was arrested later on the basis of suspicion.
Police said that the accused had earlier also attempted to rape two other women of the same village.
Judge Shangla held that "there are no mitigating circumstances and the case is undoubtedly 'rarest of rare case' where the sentence of death alone would meet the ends of justice".
Describing Nikka Singh as a savage-type of person whose "existence on earth is a grave danger to the society", the court said: "Hence, imposition of death sentence is most appropriate in this case as justice demands that court must impose punishment befitting the crime."