The main legal point established is the applicability of life imprisonment for the remainder of life in cases of heinous crimes, as upheld by the court in this judgment.

ORDER

Mukta Gupta, J. (Oral). - By these three appeals, the appellants impugn the judgment dated 16th October, 2020 whereby they have been convicted for offences punishable under Sections 376(2) (g), 377, 302 and 201 IPC and the order on sentence dated 21st January, 2021 awarded by the learned Special Judge, POCSO directing them to undergo imprisonment for the rest of their lives for offences punishable under Sections 302 and 376(2) (g) IPC, simple imprisonment for 10 years for offence punishable under Section 377 IPC, simple imprisonment for 5 years for offence punishable under Section 201 IPC and accused Jamahir has been awarded sentence of imprisonment for 5 years for offence punishable under Section 363 IPC.

2. Assailing the conviction, learned counsel for the appellant Jamahir contends that there is delay in registration of FIR. Despite the fact that the case of the parents of the victim was that she went missing in the evening of 5th January, 2012 no missing report was lodged and the FIR was lodged only on 7th January, 2012 after the post-mortem report was received by the Police. It is further contended that the so-called eye-witness Ramjanam is a planted witness and not reliable. There are material contradictions in his testimony including contradictions in the time stated by him as to when he went to the Police Station, which is contradicted by the father of the deceased/PW-2. Learned counsel further states that no rough site plan of the place of incident was prepared; though one rough site plan of Nala was prepared and in the absence of rough site plan of the place of occurrence, the FSL report claiming that the soil from the place of occurrence matched with the soil found from the body of the deceased is meaningless. She further states that no independent witness has also seen the place of occurrence. Besides challenging the manner in which based on the DNA analysis the appellants Jamahir has been convicted, learned counsel for the appellant further challenges the quantum of sentence awarded to the appellant claiming that the learned Trial Court could not have awarded sentence of imprisonment for the remainder of the life as held by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in the decision reported as (2021) 3 SCC 380 Gauri Shankar Vs. State of Punjab.

3. Learned counsel appearing on behalf of appellant Raj Kumar states that the conduct of the appellant was unbecoming of an accused as he was arrested on the disclosure statement of Jamahir outside the Police Station. He further contends that the MLC of all the appellants was conducted twice and the DNA analysis which could have been conducted based on the blood samples and would have proved the prosecution case without any ambiguity, was not adhered to; rather the Police collected semen samples of all the three appellants thus creating a doubt of planting the semen on the vaginal swabs collected as the samples were in the custody of the Police. He states that the tampering of the samples cannot be ruled out and thus the appellants are entitled to the benefit of doubt.

4. Learned counsel for the appellant Birbal adopts the arguments addressed by learned counsels for Jamahir and Raj Kumar.

5. The prosecution case commences from an information received at the Police Station Kirti Nagar at 7.45 AM on 6th January, 2012 recorded vide DD No. 11A informing that a dead body of girl aged about 3-4 years was found in front of house No.03/17, Ramesh Nagar. The body was identified to be of one 'R' aged 3 years by her father who appeared in the witness box as PW-2. The said dead body was found by Suresh (PW-10) who was the sweeper of MCD cleaning the Nala and who with the help of Shamsher Singh (PW-11) took out the body from the Nala and informed the Police.

6. The post-mortem of the dead body was conducted at 1.15 PM on 6th January, 2012 itself and the following injuries were found:

EXTERNAL EXAMINATION: External Injuries:-

1. Abraded bruise of size 1.5cm x 0.5cm present on the left side of forehead with