Rajwada, May 12: In a major development, the Indore district court on Saturday convicted Naveen Gadke, the man who raped and killed a four-month-old girl in Madhya Pradesh on April 20. The Court announced death sentence for the convict under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).

According to reports, special public prosecutor Akram Sheikh had urged sessions court judge Varsha Verma to treat the case as the "rarest of the rare" and award capital punishment to the Ghadke for the heinous crime.

To recall, the infant was asleep next to her parents in Indore when she was taken away and raped in a vacant basement. The spot where the heinous crime took place was just 50 metres away from the victim’s house. According to a PTI report, Naveen Ghadke, 25 and a cousin of the victim’s mother, was arrested by the Police from the city.

The police had detained three-four people in connection with the crime and identified the main suspect as Sunil Bheel, 21. However, the Indore Deputy Inspector General H C Mishra told reporters that the police department has found Gadke as the accused in the case after a thorough investigation.

According to reports, the child's parents were balloon sellers and usually slept on the street outside the Rajwada Fort in the city. The accused, a 21-year-old man known to the family, was sleeping close to them, police said. A close look at the CCTV camera shows the man carrying the baby on his shoulder. After committing the crime, he murdered the infant. Reports inform that the girl’s body was spotted hours later by a shopkeeper who had gone to the basement to open his shop.

HC Mishra, deputy inspector-general of police, Indore was quoted by PTI as saying that the body of the infant was recovered from the basement of a commercial building. “The accused had kidnapped her early today morning when she was asleep with her parents outside the Rajwada Fort”, he said.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 12, 2018 01:59 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).