Chandigarh, April 8 -- The Punjab and Haryana high court has quashed the death sentences awarded to two men, including the victim's cousin, in the 2019 rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl in Ludhiana's Doraha, and ordered a retrial. In March 2023, a fast-track special court under the POCSO Act had awarded capital punishment to the convicts 28-year-old cousin of the victim and a 26-year-old youth. Allegations were that convicts, both residents of Doraha and hailing from district Damriya in Uttar Pradesh, took the victim home on the pretext of getting her toffees and raped her. Later, they smashed her head with bricks. After the girl did not return, her mother launched a search and also informed the police. The girl's half-naked body was recovered from a vacant warehouse near railway lines. The FIR was registered on March 10, 2019. The high court bench of justice Anoop Chitkara and justice Sukhvinder Kaur, while hearing appeals from the convicts and answering murder reference sent by the trial court for confirmation of death sentence as mandated in law, observed that "concern for this court is the manner of investigation, omission in putting all the incriminating evidence to the accused under Section 313 CrPC, and its repercussions on the trial." Section 313 of the CrPC mandates that the accused must be informed of the circumstances appearing in the evidence against him so that the accused can offer an explanation. It confers a valuable right upon an accused to establish his innocence and can well be considered beyond a statutory right, as a constitutional right to a fair trial under Article 21 of the Constitution. The court found that questions regarding the blood stains of the girl found on the clothes of the accused were not put to them. It further recorded that they were also not questioned on two important statements from witnesses, regarding who had kidnapped her from her parents' house. As per witnesses, it was her cousin who committed the act. ".the spirit of Section 313 CrPC is .to put incriminating circumstances appearing in evidence against the accused to enable such an accused to understand and to afford an opportunity to explain," the court remarked. "All these deficiencies, which amount to irregularities, are curable, and once cured, shall neither cause any prejudice to the accused nor failure of justice to any," the court said, while remanding the case and quashing the judgment of conviction and sentence. It further noted that even as lapse of three/four years, these questions can still be put to them and no prejudice would be caused to them. The murder reference has been pending before the high court since the year 2023, but the 'defect' went unnoticed at the initial stage, it added. "Considering the average time a criminal trial takes to complete in the trial courts of Punjab and Haryana, five years should be closer to the average. Further, we need extensive data and studies to demarcate the boundary of time beyond which the delay can be considered to have prejudiced an accused, and, in the process, we cannot forget the justice to the victim of the crime," the court further recorded....