Rourkela: : A 24-year-old man was sentenced to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment by a Pocso court in Sundargarh on Tuesday for abducting and sexually assaulting a minor girl in 2021.Delivering the verdict, additional district judge-cum-presiding officer (POCSO) Gyana Ranjan Patnaik also imposed a fine of Rs 30,000 on the convict. The convict will have to undergo an additional one-year jail term if does not pay the fine, said special public prosecutor Prabhat Kumar Nanda.The court directed the District Legal Services Authority, Sundargarh, to provide a compensation of Rs 7 lakh to the survivor.According to the prosecution, the 14-year-old girl, a resident of a village in Sundargarh district, was allegedly abducted by a youth from her village on Jan 23, 2021. Her father traced her the day later in a forest area. A complaint was filed on Jan 25, following which police registered a case and arrested the accused on charges of kidnapping and repeated sexual assault.During the course of the case, the accused was released on interim bail twice but failed to remain available to the authorities. After repeatedly evading arrest, he was finally re-arrested on March 12, 2026, and had been in custody since then.
