A special POCSO court in Bhopal has sentenced 78-year-old former newspaper owner Pyare Miyan to life imprisonment 10 times in a case involving the sexual exploitation of five minor girls, and imposed a fine of Rs 77.64 lakh on him. Special Judge Kumudini Patel ordered that the sentences will run concurrently.

Source: NewsDarpan

The court also sentenced his associate Rabia Bi to 20 years in prison. It ordered that the parents of one victim, who died by suicide, be given Rs 10 lakh as compensation.

Source: Inshorts

According to the prosecution, the girls were lured with promises of jobs, sexually exploited and later blackmailed with videos recorded through hidden cameras. The prosecution said the exploitation had been going on since 2014, and that a pistol recovered from the flat was allegedly used to threaten the victims.

The case surfaced on the night of 11 July 2020, when police found five girls in suspicious circumstances. The girls told investigators during counselling that they had been called to a flat in Shahpura on the pretext of a birthday celebration, where, according to the prosecution, they were given alcohol and raped, and the abuse continued at other places afterwards.

Public Prosecutor Piyush Singh Rajput described the award of 10 life sentences in a single case as the first such instance in the country, according to the court reporting. Pyare Miyan had earlier been sentenced to life imprisonment in another POCSO case on 7 March 2022, and an appeal against that judgment is pending in the High Court.

Delivering the verdict, the court commented on the seriousness and cruelty of the offences, observing that at an age when an elderly person is expected to protect and care for girls, the accused had instead become a source of fear and insecurity for them, and that his acts had damaged social trust as well as the victims' futures. No victim has been named or identified in this report, in line with the protection given to minor victims.