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A Pocso court in UP’s Banda sentenced to death Friday a former govt junior engineer and his wife for sexually abusing 33 boys over a decade, some as young as three, and selling videos and photographs of their torture on the dark web to customers across 47 countries. Additional district judge PK Mishra said convicts Ram Bhawan (50) and Durgawati (47) inflicted such physical and psychological trauma on the survivors – some required hospitalisation for injuries to their genitals and a few developed squint eyes – that their crimes deserved to be categorised as “rarest of rare”. “The sheer scale of this victimisation across multiple districts, combined with the extreme moral turpitude of the convicts, marks this as a crime of such an exceptional and heinous nature that it leaves no room for reformation, necessitating the ultimate judicial deterrent to meet the ends of justice,” says the order. The court directed the UP govt to pay Rs 10 lakh in compensation to each of the 33 victims. Ram Bhawan, who worked in the UP jalkal (waterworks) department, and Durgawati would lure children by offering them access to online video games, money and gifts. They remained active in Banda and Chitrakoot from 2010 till 2020, when Interpol got CBI involved in an inquiry on child sexual abuse content on the dark web.‘Still battling trauma’ CBI registered an FIR on Oct 31 that year after the trail led to Ram Bhawan and Durgawati. The agency had filed a chargesheet documenting their crimes on Feb 10, 2021. Special public prosecutor Kamal Singh Gautam said the case had an overwhelming amount of evidence of what the children were subjected to. “The survivors are still suffering the psychological trauma caused by the predators”, Gautam said. CBI had medical experts from AIIMS Delhi to examine 25 of the children who suffered severe injuries at the hands of the convicts. The prosecution relied on their reports, digital evidence and the testimonies of the children to build their case and seek capital punishment to those accused in the case. Additional district judge Mishra convicted the couple of offences ranging from aggravated penetrative sexual assault and using children for pornographic purposes to abetment and criminal conspiracy under relevant sections.
