Patna: A local court in Bihar has handed out death penalty to a man found guilty for cruelly murdering a two-and-a-half-year-old baby after rape six years back. The judgement which has been described as the “rarest of rare” comes amid a spate of rape cases gripping the eastern Indian state in recent months.

The court of Dhruv Narayn Yadav in Bihar’s east Champaran district awarded the sentence of hanging the accused till death on Wednesday soon after he was convicted by the court in the horrible rape-cum-murder case. The court also imposed a monetary fine on the accused identified as Dhruv Sahani.

“We had sought for maximum punishment in the case since the crime committed here was inhumane and heinous and also we had sufficient evidence to prove the charges against the accused. And, the court eventually awarded death penalty to the accused terming it as the ‘rarest of rare’ case,” a local government council Subhash Chandra Prasad Yadav told the media Thursday.

The judgement comes more than six years after the incident had taken place. According to court records, the baby was playing outside her house at a village under Chiraiya police station in East Champaran district when the accused took her to a nearby field, raped her and then slit her throat with a sharp knife. He also tried to destroy the evidence before fleeing the scene.

Reports said the victim’s family members were at home as it the Hindu festival of Holi time when the accused took advantage of the situation. Initially, a missing person case was registered with the police, but soon it was converted into murder after her body was recovered from the field.

Incidents of rape remain a matter of grave concern in Bihar, and according to an official report, a total of 922 cases of rape have been reported till September this year. Last year, altogether, 1,008 incidents of rape had been reported, followed by 1,041 in 2015, 1,127 in 2014 and 1,128 in 2013.

Similarly, 927 cases were reported in 2012, 934 in 2011, 795 in 2010, 929 in 2009, 1,041 in 2008, 1,122 in 2007, 1,083 in 2006 and 973 in 2005 — the year when chief minister Nitish Kumar came to power doing away with 15 years of Rashtriya Janata Dal regime.

Criminal incidents refuse to die down despite repeated claims by the Nitish Kumar government. The gravity of the situation is underlined from the fact that a total of 173,645 incidents of cognisable offences have been reported till September this year. Last year, a total of 189,681 cognisable offences had been reported.