Special POCSO court said there was ‘concrete evidence’ to prove sexual assault and medical findings establish 3-yr-old girl was ‘brutally raped, sexually assaulted and then killed’.
Purva Chitnis 01 July, 2026 05:08 pm IST
Mumbai: Observing that this was a rarest of rare cases and even the death penalty may not be punishment enough given the magnitude of the crime, a special (POCSO) court in Pune earlier this week sentenced 65-year-old Bhimrao Prabhakar Kamble to death for the rape and murder of a 3-year-old child in Nasrapur. The court reasoned that “satisfaction of lust” was the only motive and the motive is “sufficient test to qualify” the death sentence.
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Bhimrao Prabhakar Kamble |
The judgment, accessed by ThePrint, also said there was “clear evidence of vaginal and anal penetration,” besides the “possibility of oral penetration”. During the course of the trial, the court also relied on the testimonies of children who were playing hide-and-seek with the victim before the incident, as well as a local vendor who saw Kamble heading towards the scene of the crime with her.
Special judge S.R. Salunkhe, who authored the judgment, also said the court examined medical findings, eyewitness accounts, CCTV footage and photos from the scene of crime to ascertain the magnitude of barbarity perpetrated by Kamble. Bhimrao Kamble’s conviction marked only the second instance in over a decade when a court in Maharashtra delivered its ruling in a POCSO case in less than 60 days from the date of commencement of the trial. Prior to this, a court had within 45 days sentenced Vashi resident Dattatraya Rokade to death for the rape and murder of his 5-year-old neighbour in 2013. His sentence was upheld by Bombay High Court but commuted to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court in 2019. In the present case, the chargesheet was filed within 16 days of the incident, and hearings began on 28 May.
Sequence of events
According to the sequence of events recorded in the judgment, Kamble was seen sitting on the steps of Shriram temple where the victim was playing hide-and-seek with her friends on the day of the incident (1 May). Kamble, eyewitnesses told the court, scared the other children away around 2.30 pm by pelting a brick at them.
Around 4 pm, the victim’s grandmother noticed that the child was missing. She alerted family members who, along with neighbours, began searching for the child. Examining CCTV footage in the process, they spotted Kamble kidnapping the girl.
They eventually tracked down Kamble but could not find the girl. It was when they searched the cowshed that they found her body under a gunny bag. Details recorded in the judgment reveal that her leggings were stuffed into her mouth and she had injuries on her face, chest and blood clots near her private parts.
Eyewitnesses
During the course of the trial, the prosecution examined 55 witnesses including local villagers, forensic experts and investigating officers, among others.
Key witnesses included Sandeep and Sandhya Gayawal, owners of the cowshed where Kamble perpetrated the crime. Sandhya told the court that the family employed Kamble as a farm labourer when needed, but he regularly fed the cows and cleaned the cowshed while staying in a tin shed adjacent to it. She also revealed that Kamble may have first seen the victim a day before the incident, when the minor along with other children from the neighbourhood visited the cowshed to see a newborn calf.
Sandeep Gayawal’s nephew Omkar was another key witness in the case. Omkar and his cousin Samiksha had, upon examining CCTV footage, first spotted Kamble going to the cowshed along with the victim. The court also admitted the testimony of one Yogesh Jangam. Kamble, court records show, purchased a savoury snack from Jangam that morning. This was how Jangam was able to identify Kamble when he saw the 65-year-old and the victim walking towards the cowshed around 3.12 pm. At about 3.51 pm, Jangam saw Kamble exiting the cowshed and walking towards the public water tank.
The court also relied on the testimonies of three children, Mohammed Aga, Ashan Ansari and Rudra Salunke. During a test identification parade, all three identified Kamble as the man they saw sitting on the steps of Shriram temple.
“These children already knew the accused, as he was working as a sweeper in their school. The competence to depose before the court of these children was duly verified and they were found to be competent to speak the truth,” the special POCSO court noted.
‘Death due to asphyxia’
According to the judgment, the post-mortem report mentioned 18 injuries on the victim’s body, caused by a hard and blunt object. The court accepted that “the death was due to asphyxia due to combined effects of smothering and gagging, associated with blunt trauma to chest (homicidal assault), with evidence of recent act of sexual assault in terms of vaginal penetration, anal penetration and seminal discharge over body”.
It stated that there was “concrete evidence” to prove sexual assault and the medical findings establish that the girl was “brutally raped, sexually assaulted and thereafter she was killed”. Further, the court found that there was evidence to suggest attempted sexual assault “even after her death”.
“She was killed by gagging her leggings into the mouth 21 cm deep which was sufficient to cause her death. All these circumstances leave no room for doubt that the accused has committed the said crime,” read the judgment.
Accused’s past
During the course of the trial, Kamble admitted that he was accused of the attempted rape of a woman in 1998, when he was 36-years-old. Seventeen years later, when was 53-years-old, Kamble faced yet another case for attempting to outrage the modesty of his 17-year-old girl niece while threatening her with a sickle.
In both these cases, he was acquitted.
During the course of the present trial, one of Kamble’s relatives also recalled an incident from 1996. Kamble, he said, was grazing she-goats and the he was grazing his cattle near a hillock in Salwade village when he saw Kamble trying to sexually assault a she-goat. The prosecution argued that Kamble’s track record was proof he remains “a menace to society since he has no remorse and is beyond reformation”. The special POCSO court heard the submission by the defence counsel that the prosecution’s case was based on the ‘last seen together’ theory and circumstantial evidence.
However, it ultimately ruled that the prosecution was able to prove Kamble’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by “establishing the continuous and complete chain of circumstances”. In its final conclusion, the court said that the evidence on record “conclusively established” that Kamble committed the crime.
“The involvement of the accused in committing the crime has been conclusively established with electronic evidence in the form of CCTV footage. The sexual and bodily assaults are proved by medical evidence. The authorship of the accused for those assaults has been proved by scientific evidence, such as DNA, semen and other forensic reports,” it ruled. It added that the mental health status and potency test reports revealed Kamble was physically and mentally fit and sexually competent, and even the “punishment of death may not be adequate but it is the greater punishment that can be awarded for such crime”.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Source: https://theprint.in/india/why-pune-court-felt-even-death-penalty-wasnt-enough-for-65-year-old-nasrapur-rape-murder-convict/2974792/?amp
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