Court sentences cook to 20 years for kidnapping and raping 3-year-old

A 24-year-old restaurant cook has been sentenced to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment for the 2020 kidnapping and rape of a three-year-old girl from a footpath. Special Judge S. C. Jadhav expressed concern about the long-lasting impact on the victim and fined the convict, Pradip Kumar Gautam, Rs 25,000, to be paid as compensation to the child.
Judge Jadhav emphasized, “The accused had preyed on the child of tender age and left a permanent scar on her life.” Special Public Prosecutor Veena Shelar sought a life sentence for Gautam and appropriate compensation for the child. The man snatched the child while she slept with her parents on a footpath on August 23, 2020. After the assault, he wrapped her in a blanket without her clothes and handed her to a resident the next day, falsely claiming he had found her in that state. The resident and his wife contacted the police, and the child’s parents were located. Gautam was later arrested, and a quilt recovered from him had bloodstains matching the child’s DNA.
Judge Jadhav relied on DNA evidence and witness statements, highlighting that Gautam failed to explain how the child’s blood ended up on his quilt. The judge noted, “Thus, the prosecution has established the chain of circumstances to infer the guilt of the accused… There is no reason to disbelieve the testimony of the prosecution witnesses.”
Among the 12 witnesses cited by Shelar were the child’s mother, the couple who found the child, police officers, and medical and forensic experts. The mother told the court that she couldn’t find her daughter when she woke up on August 24, 2020. A woman and the police later arrived with the child, who was crying and bleeding from her private parts. A man was behind her, and he claimed not to know the child before leaving. The witness identified Gautam as that man. While CCTV footage was also used by the prosecution to establish the child’s presence with Gautam on the morning of the assault, the court noted that part of the footage was inadmissible due to procedural issues and the unclear image of the child’s face.