Thaindian News

New Delhi, Oct 23 (IANS) Dismissing the plea of a man who killed his daughter after raping her in 2005, the Delhi High Court has upheld the rigorous imprisonment for life awarded to him by the trial court.

A division bench of Justice B.D. Ahmed and Justice Veena Birbal dismissed the appeal filed by Mangal Singh in an order made available Saturday and said that the circumstantial evidence led to inescapable conclusion that it was he who murdered his daughter after committing rape upon her.

“No case for interference is made out. Appellant has been rightly convicted by the sessions judge for murder and rape. We find no merit in the appeal and the same is dismissed,” said the bench.

The bench based its conclusion on a medical report which indicated that Mangal Singh killed his daughter after raping her.

“The appellant owed a duty to explain how a dead body which was the result of a homicide happened to be on his shoulder. The absence of a credible explanation on his part, in the peculiar circumstances of this case, points towards his guilt,” the court said.

Upholding the trial court’s conviction and sentence order in 2009, the bench relied upon the statement of Mangal Singh’s neighbours who had last seen the victim in the company of her father.

On the night of Oct 10, 2005 the neighbours heard Mangal Singh scream at his daughter and some of them even saw him carrying the victim on his shoulder in an unconscious state, the prosecution said.

The court accepted the testimony of prosecution witnesses Rakesh and Kuldeep Kumar who told the court that Mangal Singh admitted before them that the girl was not his daughter and he strangled her.