The rape of a child is a “monstrous burial of her dignity in darkness”, a court in Maharashtra’s Nashik observed while holding that showing leniency to the killer of a four-year-old girl would undermine public confidence in justice. A fast-track court had on Friday sentenced Vijay Sanjay Khairnar to death for raping and killing a four-year-old girl late last year, terming the gruesome crime as “rarest of the rare”.
In a detailed order, Additional Sessions Judge KG Paldewar held that the coldness with which the victim’s body was dumped shocked society’s collective conscience, ruling that sympathy in any form would be misplaced in such a diabolic crime.
It noted that the alternative punishment of life imprisonment was “unquestionably foreclosed” due to the total depravity demonstrated by convict. “There is no justification to sentence the accused to life imprisonment for the rest of his life. The accused may not be a hardened criminal, but the cruel manner in which the present crime was committed and the coldness with which the body of the victim was thrown shocked the collective conscience of the society,” it said. On November 16, 2025, the victim was playing with other children outside her house when the accused, Khairnar, a welding and furniture worker, lured her away with chocolates. He then raped, bludgeoned and throttled her to death using a kardora (a thin thread), and dumped her half-naked body inside a locked mobile tower compound next to his house in a village in Malegaon taluka of Nashik district, according to the prosecution.
Khairnar was convicted under sections 137(2) (kidnapping), 64, 64(2)(i), 65(2), 66 (rape causing death), 103(1) (murder), and 238(a) (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, as well as Sections 4 and 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. “The rape of a minor girl child is nothing but a monstrous burial of her dignity in the darkness. It is a crime against the holy body of a girl child and the soul of the society,” the court observed in its ruling. The judge noted that Khairnar’s actions reflected the extreme extent he could go to satisfy his lust while remaining completely oblivious to the norms of humanity. “The nature of the crime and the manner in which it has been committed speaks about its uncommonness. The crime speaks of depravity, degradation and uncommonality. It is diabolic and barbaric,” he held.
“The acts committed so shook the conscience of the society. When the crime is brutal, shocking the collective conscience of the society, sympathy in any form would be misplaced, and it would shake the public’s confidence in the administration of the criminal justice system,” the court remarked. Analysing the motive behind the killing, the court recorded that the murder was committed solely to suppress evidence and silence the child.