In a landmark judgment, the district court here on Friday awarded death sentence to all the three accused in Shivani murder case. The judgment which came almost 10 months after the gruesome incident, has been hailed by one and all in the city.
Besides family members of late Shivani, a large number of persons from Shomnath Ki Juni Chaal (the deceased belonged to this place), who had gathered in the court since early Friday morning, while hailing the verdict, said justice would be done only if the three accused are sent to the gallows.
After 10 months of trial, the additional district and sessions judge, Indira Singh, found all the three accused, namely, Sunni alias Devendra, Jeetu and Babu alias Ketan guilty of rape and murder of 4-year-old Shivani and awarded death sentence to them under section 363, 376 and 302 of the IPC.
Shivani had been abducted by the accused on June 24 last year, while she was standing outside her house in Somnath Ki Juni Chaal and watching a marriage procession passing in front of her house. Soon after she was reported missing, the family members searched her everywhere but she could not be located.
Finally, the family members lodged a 'missing report' with lIG police station.
It was only next morning, that is, on June 25, 2012 that police recovered the badly mutilated body of Shivani from a nullah near Velocity Talkies in Malviya Nagar. Post mortem report of Shivani revealed that before she was crushed to death with stones, the deceased had been raped by all the three accused. The gruesome incident shook the whole city with a large number of people of SomnathKi Juni Chaal staging a demonstration before the MIG police station next day, demanding the arrest and hanging of the accused.
The then Indore IG, Anuradha Shankar, taking serious note of the incident, immediately took the city police to task. Subsequently, the city police in a swift action arrested all the three accused within 24 hours of the incident and produced them before the court and submitted challans against them.
On the basis of documentary evidence against the accused submitted by Indore police in the court, recording of statements by the witnesses and after a number of hearings, the additional district and sessions judge awarded death sentence to all the three accused.