The Supreme Court has awarded death sentence to a man found guilty of rape and murder of a six-year old girl.

Setting aside an order of the Allahabad high court acquitting Satish of the charges, a Bench of Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice S H Kapadia restored the trial court order convicting and sentencing him to death.

The Bench noted that the case fell within the 'rarest of rare' category and remarked that leniency in punishing grave crimes will have 'serious consequences'.

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Vishakha, a student in a Sarvodaya Public School in a Uttar Pradesh village, was lured by the accused, and three people had seen him taking her on a bicycle on March 16, 2001. Her body was found a day later in a nearby sugarcane field.

The trial court, relying on the circumstantial evidence, convicted Satish and sentenced him to death. The HC, on an appeal, felt it was not safe to base conviction solely on circumstantial evidence and acquitted the accused.

However, setting aside the HC order, the apex court said the offence became 'abominable' and 'diabolical', as the victim was a child who was brutally killed after the 'depraved' act.