Couple gets death sentence for dark web abuse

In a landmark ruling, a Pocso court in Banda, Uttar Pradesh, has sentenced a former government junior engineer, Ram Bhawan, and his wife, Durgawati, to death. The couple was convicted of sexually abusing 33 boys over a ten-year period, with victims as young as three years old. Their crimes extended to selling videos and photographs of the torture on the dark web to clients in 47 different countries.

The court deemed the offenses as 'rarest of rare', citing the extreme physical and psychological trauma inflicted upon the survivors, some of whom required hospitalization for genital injuries and developed squint eyes. The scale of victimization and the convicts' moral depravity left no room for reformation, necessitating the ultimate judicial deterrent.