Palghar, Dec 31 (PTI) A court in Maharashtra's Palghar district has sentenced a 38-year-old truck driver to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment for raping a seven-year-old girl five years ago.

In his order on Saturday, the District and Additional Sessions Judge at Vasai, SV Khongal, also imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on the convict.

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Special Public Prosecutor Jaiprakash Patil told the court that the truck driver and the child's family were neighbours in Vasai.

Patil told the court that the man brought the girl and her brother to his house on the pretext of watching TV on May 13, 2018. He then drove her brother out and sexually assaulted the girl.

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The judge said the prosecution had successfully proved all the charges against the truck driver and convicted him under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

The court sentenced the man to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment, also noting that the girl's family had “suffered a lot”.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)