Madras High Court confirms death sentence for man convicted of sexual assault of three girl children

The Madras High Court on Tuesday (June 30, 2026) confirmed the death sentence imposed by a trial court on a daily wage labourer, Anandha Sekar, under the Protection of Children for Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act of 2012 for having subjected three girl children aged six, seven and eight to aggravated penetrative sexual assault in Tirunelveli city in 2023.

A Division Bench of Justices N. Anand Venkatesh and K.K. Ramakrishnan dismissed a criminal appeal filed by the convict challenging his conviction as well as capital punishment imposed by a special court for POCSO Act cases in Tirunelveli on March 12, 2026. The judgment was reserved in the Madurai Bench of the High Court but delivered at the principal seat in Chennai.

The judges wrote: “The measure of a society’s civilisation is found in how it protects its most vulnerable and no one is more vulnerable than a child trusting the sanctity of the whole. The accused before us did not merely commit a crime against the physical body. He executed a calculated and systematic campaign of terror of three young souls by wielding threats of death and forcing these children to witness the violation of one another. He did not just break the law but he extinguised the light of their childhood and left in its place a lifetime of haunting shadows.”

Authoring the verdict, Justice Venkatesh wrote: “A crime so grotesque, so utterly devoid of a shred of human conscience demands a judicial response that mirrors society’s collective abhorrence. To spare the life of the perpetrator who committed such cold blooded and protracted cruelty would be an act of misplaced mercy rendering the law a silent spectator to the destruction of the innocent.”

The Division Bench further observed that not imposing capital punishment and instead commuting it to life imprisonment even in a serious case such as the present one “would send a devastating message to the community that the soul of a child is cheap and that a monster could trade the lifelong peace of the victims for the comfort a prison cell.”

Making it clear they were acutely aware of the fact that death penalty was an extraordinary measure reserved exclusively for the rarest of rare cases where the alternative was unquestionably foreclosed, the judges said: “This case stands as the tragic epitome of that exception. The law must possess a spine of steal in dealing with those who prey on children to satisfy their thoughtless instincts.”

The Bench added: “Let this judgement serve as a stark, unyielding warning to anyone who believes that they can manipulate, terrorise and destroy the youth of our nation with impunity. By confirming the death sentence, this court does not act out of vengeance but out of the solemn duty to justice, deterrence and the restoration of moral order for actions that have effectively slained the souls of three innocent children.”

The judges went on to write: “The law can offer no sanctuary. The prisoner has forfeited his right to walk among humanity.” They cited Supreme Court’s 1992 verdict in Madan Gopal Kakkad versus Naval Dubey (1992) in which the top court had said: “Judges who bear the sword of justice should not hestitate to use that sword with utmost severity to the full and to the end if the gravity of the offences so demands.”

Justices Venkatesh and Ramakrishnan were of the firm view that “the case in hand demands wielding that sword with utmost severity since gravity of the case so demands.”