Indian judge delivers emotional poem while sentencing man to death for raping three-year-old

Twenty-two-year-old attacker given death sentence less than a month after attack

Protesters at a demonstration in April following a string of child rapes in India (REUTERS)

An Indian judge wrote a poem lamenting child sexual abuse and read it out in court as she sentenced a rapist to death.

In an emotional address, Neerja Dadhich said her “heart bleeds” for a three-year-old girl who had been raped by 22-year-old Vinod Kumar.

Kumar was charged by police in Jhunjhunu, a city in the northern Rajasthan state, on 13 August.

He was sentenced to death less than a month after he attacked the girl on 2 August, The Times of India reported.

Ms Dadhich read the poem during a highly unusual court hearing on Friday.

“What a country we have become, a child who had seen only three springs could not be saved from subjecting to this injustice,” it read. “If we do not mend our ways, that day is not far off [that] even God may [be] afraid to bless this country with girl children.”

The judge also took aim at people who blamed sex attacks on women’s choice of clothing.

“How do I make a three-year-old child wear a saree?” she asked.

The Indian government introduced the death penalty for child rape earlier this year following uproar over a string of cases.

Five people have been sentenced to death in Rajasthan for sexually assaulting victims aged under 12 since the law was introduced.

Ms Dadhich told the court: “Persons who commit such crimes do not deserve any mercy for reform and death sentence is the apt punishment in such cases.”