NEW DELHI, May 21: A Delhi court has awarded death sentence to the rapist and murderer of a four-year-old girl. His accomplice has been given life sentence four times in the case for abetting the crime.

The child was abducted from Daya Basti at Railway Line on September 5, 1992. The teenage killers Ramesh and Sunil drugged and tortured the child before raping her. The child died due to ``inter-cranial damage'' as her head kept banging against the wall while she was being raped.

The sentence was announced by additional sessions judge S M Chopra on Tuesday. The judge said, ``Looking at the victim, her age, the physical and sexual violence inflicted on her, my view is that the accused deserve exemplary punishment, as to frighten any misguided youth to even think of committing such a ghastly deed.''

As per the autopsy report, the child had sustained 28 external injuries, inflicted by blunt objects besides bite and nail marks and also internal injuries.

The murder was supposed to be a vengeance on her widowed mother, Sharda, for refusing to marry Ramesh. On September 5 that year, Sharda, a factory worker, had left her daughter with her landlady Tara before leaving for work. Sunil, then aged 17, abducted the girl while Tara was away.The girl was drugged and then raped by the two boys in Sunil's house. According to prosecution, the victim was beaten several times with an iron scale and a steel karsi.When Sharda went to Sunil's house in search of her daughter she found the child's battered body.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.