2 weeks Ago By Bagish Jha
Representative Image GURGAON: A Nepali man arrested in 2022 for the brutal rape and murder of a woman sitting alone near a metro station in Faridabad was handed the death sentence on Thursday by a local court, which saw no reason to show leniency for a crime that it described as "diabolical, revolting and dastardly". Manoj Nepali was arrested after he was spotted on CCTV footage walking with the woman close to the crime scene. What made this case "brutal and grotesque" was the horrific manner in which the crime was committed.
The woman was found dead with a trauma injury on her head. She also had internal injuries from a broken pipe he thrust into her private parts. On the night of Nov 7, 2022, she was sitting alone near Bata Chowk metro station after a fight with her mother when Manoj - a daily wager - walked up to her and enquired if all was well.
After striking up a conversation, he offered to share her problems and persuaded her to walk with him. Manoj took her to a vacant building in Sector 7, where he overpowered and raped her. He forced her to walk with him and sexually assaulted her again near a park.
As the woman tried to fight him off, he pulled the two ends of her dupatta, strangled her and banged her head against a wall. "The tormentor would not let go of the dupatta. After some time, she slumped to the ground.
Realising she had died, Manoj picked up an iron pipe lying nearby, inserted it into her private parts and fled the spot," said Suresh Chaudhary, the public prosecutor. Passersby spotted her body the next morning and informed police. A case of rape and murder was registered at Sector 8 police station and a manhunt was launched for Manoj, based on the footage.
The hunt took police all the way to the Nepal border at Sonauli in UP. On Nov 18 - 11 days after the crime - Manoj was trying to sneak into Nepal when he was arrested. Originally from Samdu, he had been working in Faridabad for some years.
On Nov 21, police reached out to the woman's husband with her photograph. He identified her as his wife. The husband told police his wife had left for her parents' house in Ballabhgarh three months before the day she was murdered.
On Nov 7, when his in-laws informed him she had left home after a fight, he said he had started looking for her. Police had said at the time the husband - a construction site worker - did not have a TV set or phone at home, which was why he was not aware of the rape and murder. During the course of the hearing, the prosecution submitted in court the footage showing Manoj walking with the woman, and other forensic and medical evidence to seek capital punishment for him.
Sudhir Kumar, who represented Manoj in court, argued there was no witness to the crime and police had relied only on circumstantial evidence to arrest his client. This argument was rejected by the court. On Thursday, additional sessions judge Purushottam Kumar observed that "all incriminating circumstances were duly proved by the prosecution and are consistent only with the hypothesis of the guilt of accused Manoj Nepali and are inconsistent with his innocence".
"It formed a complete chain and proved that in all human probabilities, the victim/deceased was brutally raped and murdered by the accused Manoj Nepali only and no one else," the court said. The court, in its order, also took note of the multiple injuries on the woman, bloodstains on the wall where she banged her head and marks of resistance on the ground. "The offence was committed in an extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical, revolting, and dastardly manner, so as to arouse intense and extreme indignation of the society," the judge observed.
The court then sentenced Manoj to death and also imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh..
