Lucknow: More than three years after a horrific crime, four persons, including a couple, were sentenced to life imprisonment on Saturday for killing a seven-year-old girl and eating her liver and other vital organs at the behest of an occultist in Kanpur’s Ghatampur area. The girl was sexually assaulted before her murder.
Additional district judge (Pocso Act) Baquar Shamim Rizvi sentenced the couple, Parshuram and Sunaina, their nephew Ankul and his associate Viren to life imprisonment.
Additional district government counsels Ram Rakshit Sharma, Pradeep Pandey and Ajay Kumar Tripathi said a resident of a village in Ghatampur had lodged a complaint that her seven-year-old daughter had gone missing while playing outside her house on November 14, 2020. The following day, her mutilated body was found in a field outside the village.
During investigation, cops came to know that Parshuram and Sunaina were childless even after 19 years of their marriage and had approached an occultist who asked them to eat the liver of a girl child. Subsequently, Ankul and Viren sexually assaulted the girl before killing her. They took out the girl’s liver and gave it to Parshuram and Sunaina.
ADGC Pradeep Pandey said the prosecutors had demanded the death sentence for the convicts. “We will study the verdict and if some points emerge, we will move the high court to seek the death sentence,” he said, adding that the victim had fallen prey to a barbaric crime.
The trial lasted nearly three years with the Ghatampur police filing a chargesheet 37 days after the crime.
The court convicted all the four accused on Wednesday and fixed Saturday for pronouncing the quantum of sentence. The court also imposed a fine of Rs 45,000 each on Ankul and Viren and Rs 20,000 each on Parshuram and Sunaina.
