Muzaffarnagar (UP), Feb 1 (PTI) A court here on Wednesday sentenced a man to death for raping and murdering a three-year-old girl in June last year and awarded life imprisonment to another for abducting the minor.

Terming it a "rarest of rare" case, special POCSO court judge Baburam ordered that Soni alias Surender (30) be hanged till death.

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District government counsel Rajiv Sharma and special POCSO lawyer Dinesh Sharma told PTI that Soni alias Surender and Rajesh came on a motorcycle and abducted the girl on June 12 last year. Later that day, Soni raped the girl before killing her in Jansath town here, they said.

According to a complaint lodged by the victim's mother, the accused took her daughter to a jungle where she was later found unconscious. She was rushed to a hospital in critical condition and was declared dead by doctors, the complaint stated.

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Police had registered a case under sections 363 (kidnapping), 376 (rape), 302 (murder), 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act against the two accused and arrested them.

(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)