The Nashik fast‑track court handed down a death sentence to Vijay Sanjay Khairnar on Tuesday, marking the final verdict in the rape‑murder case that shocked the district.
Khairnar, a welding and furniture worker, lured the 4‑year‑old girl from her home with chocolates on November 16, 2025, before raping, bludgeoning and throttling her to death inside a locked mobile‑tower compound beside his residence in Malegaon taluka.
The court’s order, issued by Additional Sessions Judge KG Paldewar, noted that the brutality of the act and the deliberate disposal of the body constituted the “rarest of the rare,” leaving no space for leniency.
In its reasoning, Judge Paldewar said the crime’s extreme depravity and the coldness with which the body was dumped shocked society’s conscience, deeming life imprisonment insufficient for a case that “treated a child’s life as an obstacle to be removed.”
The prosecution, led by Special Public Prosecutors Ujjwal Nikam and S K Sonawane, presented 24 witnesses, DNA analysis and forensic evidence linking the child’s blood‑stained clothes to the victim’s biological material found at Khairnar’s house.
The court additionally directed that ₹10 lakh be paid to the parents under the Maharashtra Government’s revised Manodhairya Yojana scheme, and the death sentence will now be forwarded to the High Court for confirmation.