A Buxo court in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, on Friday sentenced a former government engineer and his wife to death for sexually abusing 33 boys over a decade, some as young as three, and selling videos and photographs of their torture on the dark web to customers in 47 countries. District Judge BK Mishra said convicts Ram Bhawan (50) and Durgawati (47) had inflicted physical and psychological trauma on the survivors – some of whom required hospitalization due to injuries to their genitals and a few suffered strabismus – and that their crimes deserved to be classified as “the rarest of rare cases”. “The sheer scale of this victimization in multiple areas, coupled with the extreme moral depravity of those convicted, indicates that this is a crime of such an exceptional and heinous nature that it leaves no room for redress, necessitating ultimate judicial deterrence to achieve the ends of justice,” the order said.
The court ordered the UP government to pay Rs 10 lakh as compensation to each of the 33 victims. Ram Bhawan, who worked in the UP jalkal (waterworks) department, and Durgawati were luring children by giving them access to online video games, money and gifts. They remained active in Banda and Chitrakoot from 2010 until 2020, when Interpol involved the CBI in an investigation into child sexual abuse content on the dark web.‘Still in shock’ The CBI registered an FIR on October 31 that year after the route led to Ram Bhawan and Durgawati.
The agency filed an indictment documenting its crimes on February 10, 2021. Special Public Prosecutor Kamal Singh Gautam said the case contains a huge amount of evidence of what the children were subjected to. “The survivors are still suffering from the psychological trauma caused by the predators,” Gautam said. The CBI had medical experts from AIIMS Delhi examine 25 children who sustained serious injuries at the hands of the convicts. The prosecution relied on its reports, digital evidence, and children’s testimonies to build its case and demand the death penalty for the defendants in the case. Additional District Judge Mishra convicted the couple of offenses ranging from penetrative sexual assault and use of children for pornographic purposes to abetment and criminal conspiracy under relevant sections.
