Special court in Chhattisgarh awards death sentence to man for raping, murdering niece

RAIPUR: A Special POCSO Court in Durg, Chhattisgarh awarded capital punishment to a man for the brutal rape and murder of his six-year-old niece on Friday.The Additional Sessions Judge (Special POCSO Court), Anish Dubey, classified the horrific crime to the "rarest of rare" category, ordering that Somesh Yadav, 24, be hanged to death.The incident unfolded on April 6, 2025, on the sacred festival of Ram Navami. The six-year-old girl, dressed up to attend a traditional Kanya Bhoj (ceremonial feast honouring young girls) at her grandmother's house. There, her uncle, Yadav, lured her to the terrace, subjected her to extreme sexual violence, and killed her.In a calculated attempt to destroy evidence, Yadav dumped the barely breathing child inside a parked car of a local resident, Anurag Meshram. Yadav then joined family search parties, pretending to look for the missing girl. When Meshram eventually discovered the child in the locked vehicle and raised an alarm, Yadav assaulted Meshram in a bid to divert suspicion onto him.The post-mortem examinations revealed that the girl had suffered fatal heat shocks and suffocation inside the sweltering vehicle, with blisters proving she was still alive when abandoned in the vehicle.