CHENNAI: A murderer of a child,
awarded death sentence by a sessions court, escaped the noose with the Madras
high court commuting it into imprisonment for life.
Venkatesan (26)
murdered nine-year-old Rebecca in March 2006, due to personal enmity with the
child's social worker-mother in Tiruvallur district.
Venkatesan was
working as a van driver in the orphanage run by Sheeba Elizabeth. Owing to his
illicit intimacy with a co-worker, Sheeba had dismissed him from service. She
had also made arrangements to send the woman along with her parents. Infuriated
by her action, Venkatesan went to Sheeba's house on March 28, 2006 and found her
children — nine-year-old Rebecca and her four-year-old brother —
playing on the ground floor.
Venkatesan called the girl and asked her
to hold a candle. He then suddenly poured kerosene on her. All this was
witnessed by the victim's brother, who refused to go near Venkatesan earlier.
While being rushed to hospital, Rebecca kept asking her mother, "why that anna
(elder brother) did this?" Even moments before her death, the child told the
doctor that it was Venkatesan who set her aflame.
The Fast Track
Court-III at Poonamallee awarded him death sentence, and the present appeal is
directed against that order.
A division bench comprising justice M
Chockalingam and justice S Rajeswaran rejecting the defence arguments advanced
on behalf of Venkatesan said the five-hour delay in lodging the complaint would
in no way affect the prosecution case, and that the case had been clearly proved
by scientific evidence adduced by the police. The judges said they were
satisfied with the evidence of Sheeba's son, who was the eyewitness to the
ghastly offence.
However, declining to consider it as a rarest of
rare cases, the bench said the accused was aged only 26, and that he was not
involved in any other criminal case to be considered a menace to the society in
the future. The bench modified the sentence into life imprisonment, after
stating that the murder of an innocent child was "heinous and gruesome."