Hoshiarpur (Punjab), Sep 18 A Fast-Track Special Court in Hoshiarpur on Friday sentenced a 33-year-old migrant labourer to death for killing a five-year-old boy after committing aggravated sexual assault on him in September last year.
Terming it a "rarest of rare" case, Additional Sessions Judge Manpreet Kaur directed that the accused Nanke Yadav alias Radhe Sham, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Gonda district, be hanged till death under Section 103 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).
However, the death sentence is subject to confirmation by the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the order said.
The court also sentenced Radhe Sham to 10 years' rigorous imprisonment under Section 140(1) of the BNS, seven years under Section 238 of the BNS, 20 years under Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and five years under Section 10 of the POCSO Act. All the sentences will run concurrently. A fine of Rs 5,000 was levied under each section.
The court also awarded Rs 5 lakh as compensation to the parents of the deceased child under the Punjab Victim or their Dependents Compensation Scheme, 2011.
According to the complainant's counsel Ashwani K Verma, the case dates back to September 9, 2025, when the boy went missing after visiting a gurdwara at Mohalla New Deep Nagar in Hoshiarpur along with his nine-year-old sister.
The accused, who was residing at New Sabzi Mandi in Hoshiarpur at the time, had lured the boy away on the pretext of pushing his toy two-wheeler. The child's body was recovered from bushes near the boundary wall of a cremation ground in Rahimpur the next morning.
Based on the boy's father's statement, a case was registered at Industrial Focal Point Purhiran police station on September 10, 2025. Police arrested Nanke Yadav, a migrant labourer, within 24 hours of the FIR.
The court found that Yadav had abducted the minor boy, committed aggravated sexual assault and subsequently murdered him.
It convicted Yadav on September 15, 2026 and reserved the order on the quantum of sentence for September 18.
The death sentence will not be executed unless confirmed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The convict has also been informed of his right to appeal against the judgment and order on sentence within 30 days, the counsel said.
