An Uttar Pradesh man was sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape of a seven-year-old girl, nine years after he was convicted in a similar case but later acquitted by the Supreme Court on technical grounds, according to a lawyer on Saturday.
The judgment was delivered by Additional District Judge Nirdosh Kumar in Shravasti. The incident occurred in May in a village under the Ikauna police station jurisdiction. Chhotkau, also known as Alauddin, an e-rickshaw driver, took the minor from a wedding ceremony to a secluded area where the crime was committed, explained Satyendra Bahadur Singh, Additional District Government Advocate under the POCSO Act.
Family members discovered the girl in a distressed state, crying and covered in blood, and subsequently filed a police complaint. The girl later identified Chhotkau during an identification parade in court, and corroborative evidence such as CCTV footage and DNA test results confirmed his involvement. On Friday, the court sentenced him to life imprisonment and imposed a fine of ₹300,000.
In a previous case, a local court had sentenced Chhotkau to death for the rape and murder of a six-year-old girl in 2011, a verdict that was upheld by the Allahabad High Court. However, the Supreme Court later acquitted him, citing delays in the transmission of case information from the police station to the trial court. The appeal was filed by lawyers associated with NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, through a national-level human rights NGO.
As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 2023 report, Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number of crimes against women, with 66,381 reported cases. Although the state has a large population, which constitutes about 17% of India’s total, analysts point out that the crime rate against women stood at 58.6 per 100,000 female population, lower than the national average of 66.2 and significantly lower than that of Delhi, Telangana, Rajasthan, and Haryana.
Overall, Uttar Pradesh ranked 20th among 36 states and Union territories, registering a crime rate of 181.3 per lakh population, compared to the national average of 270.3.
