13 February 2025 :

A court in India has sentenced five men to death for the gang rape and murder of a teenager as well as the killing of her father and toddler-aged niece, said public prosecutor Sunil Kumar Mishra on January 23, 2025, the day after the sentence was published by the court.
The crime was committed in January 2021 when the men offered the girl and her family all members of a disadvantaged tribal community in the central state of Chhattisgarh lifts on their motorbikes while they were waiting for public transport.
They later clubbed the teenager's father to death as he attempted to stop the rape and killed her three-year-old niece, Sunil Kumar Mishra told AFP.
Additional sessions Judge Mamta Bhojwani convicted Santram Majhwar (49), Abdul Jabbar (34), Anil Kumar Sarthi (24), Pardeshi Ram (39) and Anand Ram Panika (29) under sections 302 (murder), 376 (2)G (gangarape) and other sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and sentenced them to death.
A sixth man "was found guilty of association in crimes, but his involvement in rape was not proved, so he was sentenced to imprisonment for the remainder of his life for killings", he added.
An average of nearly 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022 in the country of 1.4 billion people, but activists say many more go unreported.