Hampi rape-murder: Judgment details brutality

Koppal: Chilling details have now emerged in public domain on the Sanapur rape-murder case, with the judgement delivered by the First Additional District and Sessions Court in Gangavathi on Feb 16 now available online.The court had handed out death penalty to three men convicted in the crime in which an Israeli woman tourist, aged 27, along with an Indian homestay owner, 29, were gang raped, and Bibhas Nayak, 26, an Indian male tourist guide from Odisha, was murdered. Two other male tourists -- Daniel Pitas, 23, from the US, and Pankaj Patil, 43, from Nashik in Maharashtra -- were physically assaulted.
All five had met at a homestay near the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hampi and had gone out stargazing near the Tungabhadra Left bank Canal on March 6 last year when the incident occurred. The court had held that the case fell in the category of "rarest of rare" crimes due to its calculated brutality and coordinated execution. The convicts -- Mallesh alias Handimalla, 22; Sai alias Chaitanya Sai, 21; and Sharanappa alias Sharanabasavaraj, 30; all residents of Sainagar in Gangavathi -- were found guilty of rape, murder, attempted murder, and robbery. Pronouncing the verdict, presiding Judge Sadananda Nagappa Nayak meticulously reconstructed the sequence of events, observing that the accused had approached the tourists with the clear intention of robbery and sexual assault. When the victims resisted, they were brutally attacked. According to the findings recorded during trial, Bibhas had attempted to shield the two women and fend off the attackers. The court noted that he was chased towards a canal, pushed into the water and relentlessly pelted with stones, leading to his death. The court termed the act intentional and calculated, stating that the assault aimed to eliminate resistance. The other two male companions were also attacked with stones and they, too, sustained serious head injuries. The judge observed that this was done to incapacitate them, so that the sexual offences on the two women could be carried out without interference. On the charge of rape, the court held that the two women were overpowered and sexually assaulted by the accused acting in concert. The judgment underscored that the crime was not an individual act, but a coordinated assault executed with shared intent. Each accused, the court said, was fully aware of and complicit in the actions of the others. Describing the conduct of the convicts as reflecting "total depravity" and a complete disregard for human dignity, the court noted that the offences formed a continuous chain of criminal acts -- sexual violence, murder, attempted murder, and robbery -- carried out in a single, coordinated episode. The assailants had also robbed the victims, stealing two mobile phones and Rs 9,500 in cash before fleeing the crime scene. While determining the sentence, the court identified several aggravating factors: the exceptional brutality of the killing, the vulnerability of the victims, the multiplicity of offences, and the absence of mitigating circumstances. The manner of the murder -- pushing the victim into deep water and stoning him while he struggled to get out -- was described as particularly heinous. Observing that the crime shocked the collective conscience of society, especially as it occurred near the internationally renowned site of Hampi, the court concluded that the case met the legal threshold for invoking the "rarest of rare" doctrine.