The Punjab and Haryana high court has acquitted a Goraya man awarded death penalty by a special court in 2024 for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl.
According to the police complaint, the accused, Gurpreet Singh @Gopi, had kidnapped the girl, who happened to live near his house in February 2021. Police registered a kidnapping case and started investigation. Later, the cops found the mutilated body of the girl from Gopi’s house. The criminal case was registered on February 14 for rape and murder on the complaint of her father. A special court in September 2024 had awarded death penalty to the accused, an order challenged by him in high court.
“It seems that the investigating agency found an easy prey in the appellant-accused Gurpreet @ Gopi who is an orphan and has no other member of the family and with no stable means of sustenance to douse the unrest and commotion which may have arisen as a result of a perceived rape and murder of a minor girl child. The accused with no members of family to pursue his defence and with minimal means of defending himself thus have little shot,” the bench of justice Vinod S Bhardwaj and justice Sukhvinder Kaur observed, adding that let alone it be a case where capital punishment ought to be awarded, it is a case where benefit of doubt needs to be extended.
The court found that there were no signs of any sexual assault on the deceased though the hymen was ruptured, however, there were no signs of any internal injuries. The medical board, however, gave an opinion of rape only on presence of semen on the pyjama worn by Gopi. “The possibility of complete absence of semen on deceased becomes a significant missing link,” it said.
The court also found that witnesses stated that the accused was wearing the same pyama after the incident and even at the time when the girl was being searched. It is highly unlikely and unnatural for a person to be accompanying in search of the girl, while wearing a blood-stained pyjama even as house belonged to him, it added.
‘Fingerprints not taken from hammer’
The prosecution case also creates a doubt due to differences in the contents of the seized material viz-a-viz the contents of the parcel received at the forensic laboratory, it said. The court also found that no fingerprints were lifted from the hammer to establish existence of any finger prints of the accused.
“The death is an evidence, which travels no far beyond then recovery of the body itself. The offence of murder or rape having been committed by the owner of the house does not statutorily flow from a mere recovery of the body,” it said, adding that It is only amongst many relevant facts which are to be kept in mind while adjudicating the issue. It cannot be read as proof of the commission of offence, it added.
The court also pointed out that one more person Vikas @ Sonu lived with the accused and went missing after the crime. Investigation does not suggest whether he got a clean chit in the probe, it added.
