INDIA: DEATH FOR CHILD MURDERS

a fast track court in Jalandhar, India, sentenced a “serial baby killer” to death. The man allegedly killed over 20 children, mostly migrants, after kidnapping them. Additional sessions judge I.S. Bajwa ordered Darbara Singh to hang for the 2004 murders of two children, Khursheed, 5, and his cousin Ropu, 6. Singh was acquitted in three such cases, however over 20 cases of murder, rape and sodomy of girls and boys are pending against him. In a complaint to the police in October 2004, Mohammad Vakil- a resident of Darbhanga district in Bihar, alleged his son Khursheed and niece Ropu had gone missing under mysterious circumstances. Later their bodies were found from a sugarcane field at a village on the Kala Sanghian road. Singh had already been sentenced to imprisonment for allegedly raping and attempting to murder a migrant girl but was released after 10 years without completing full term from the Ludhiana jail for his `good conduct’ in the jail.