Chandigarh: The mastermind behind the 2018 rape and murder of an eight-year-old in Kathua does not deserve the “concession of suspension of sentence at this stage”, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has said while dismissing a plea from former temple caretaker Sanji Ram.
Ram, who was caretaker of the ‘devasthanam’ (temple) where the crime took place in January 2018, was sentenced to life by a sessions court in Pathankot the following year. His nephew Parvesh Kumar and special police officer Deepak Khajuria were also given life terms.
A division bench of Justices Gurvinder Singh Gill and Ramesh Kumari passed the order on Ram’s plea on March 6. The three-page order was made available earlier this week.
Without commenting on the merits of the case, the court said it was of the opinion “that it is not a case where the applicant/appellant deserves the concession of suspension of sentence at this stage”.
“The application, as such, is dismissed,” it said.
The court, however, directed the registry to list Ram’s main appeal against conviction for final hearing in September this year given the fact that he has already spent a substantial amount of time in custody.
According to the 15-page chargesheet filed by the Jammu and Kashmir crime branch in April 2018, the nomadic girl was abducted on January 10 that year and raped in captivity in the small village temple in Jammu’s Kathua region that was exclusively manned by Ram. She was kept sedated for four days and later bludgeoned to death, it said.
Arguing for suspension of Ram’s life sentence, senior advocate Vinod Ghai said before the high court that the prosecution examined as many as 114 prosecution witnesses but no concrete evidence was brought on record to establish his involvement.