AFP, May 2, 2003
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/
From correspondents in Ranchi, India
A court has sentenced a priest to death for sacrificing a nine-year-old child to appease a deity in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand.
A lawyer said the state’s High Court upheld the sentence imposed by a lower court, saying it was a case of extreme culpability which rendered life imprisonment inadequate.
“The murder … was definitely extremely brutal, grotesque, diabolical, revolting and dastardly so as to arouse indignation,” the court said.
The priest was said to have sacrificed the boy in order to please a goddess.
The killing happened in the Jamtara district, nearly 200km from the state capital Ranchi.
He was booked by the police on a complaint lodged by the child’s parents and initially sentenced to death by a Jamtara court.