UP court sentences couple to death for sexual offences against 33 minors

A court in Uttar Pradesh on Friday awarded the death penalty to a couple for various sexual offences and heinous crimes against 33 children. They were accused of committing unnatural offences, using children for pornographic purposes, storage of pornographic material involving children, abetment and criminal conspiracy.

The sentence was delivered by a special judge under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act) in UP's Banda, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) said in a press release.

According to the CBI, the accused are Rambhawan, a former junior engineer with the Irrigation Department, and his wife Durgawati.

The Trial Court has ordered that the government pay a compensation of ₹ 10 lakh to each survivor. Additionally, the court ordered that the cash seized from the accused persons' house be distributed among the survivors in equal proportion, the CBI said.

According to the case registered by the CBI in 2020, the accused committed various crimes, including aggravated penetrative sexual assaults against 33 male children, some of them as young as three years. The Investigation also revealed that some of the survivors had suffered injuries during the sexual assault, with some of them remaining hospitalised. 

Survivors are still suffering from psychological trauma caused by the predators, the CBI said. The accused were active in the areas of Banda and Chitrakoot in Uttar Pradesh between 2010 and 2020, according to the CBI. They lured children through online video games and gave money or gifts, the agency said. 

A chargesheet was filed against Rambhawan and Durgawati in February 2021, and the charges were framed in May 2023. 

While awarding the death penalty, the trial court found the criminal acts of the accused to be “rarest of rare” based on unparalleled depravity and systemic nature of their crimes, the CBI said. "The sheer scale of this victimisation across multiple districts, combined with the extreme moral turpitude of the convicts, marks this as a crime of such an exceptional and heinous nature that it leaves no room for reformation, necessitating the ultimate judicial deterrent to meet the ends of justice," the agency said.

(With Bar and Bench inputs)