Gandhi Nagar gangrape case: Police urges HC to enhance 20 years jail term of convicts

New Delhi: The Delhi Police Monday urged the Delhi High Court to enhance the punishment of 20 years imprisonment awarded to two men for raping a five-year-old girl and shoving objects in her body here in 2013.

A bench of Justices Siddharth Mridul and Rajnish Bhatnagar said it would hear the plea on August 22.

In the gruesome incident at Gandhi Nagar in East Delhi on April 15, 2013, the two convicts had raped and shoved objects in the minor victim's private parts and abandoned her in a room, believing she was dead. The child was rescued 40 hours later on April 17, 2013.

The trial court had in January 2020, convicted and sentenced Manoj Shah and Pradeep Kumar to 20 years in jail in the case.

Shah has also approached the high court challenging his conviction and sentence.

Prosecutor Ashish Dutta, representing the State, submitted that the trial court awarded just 20 years of imprisonment to the two men which was not adequate considering the nature of the offence, and urged the high court to enhance the sentence.

The trial court had on January 18, 2020, convicted Shah and Kumar under sections 363 (kidnapping), 342 (wrongful confinement), 201 (disappearance of evidence), 304 (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 376 (2) (gang rape), 377 (unnatural offence) and 34 of the Indian Penal Code and Section 6 (aggravated penetrative sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

Shah and Kumar were arrested from Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga in Bihar on April 20 and April 22 in 2013, respectively.