Rajkot, Mar 13: A court in Gujarat's Rajkot district on Monday sentenced to death a man accused of brutally killing a minor girl by stabbing her 34 times for rejecting his proposal.

The court of additional district and sessions judge R R Chaudhary at Jetpur sentenced to death Jayesh Sarvaiya (26) for stabbing a Class 11 student 34 times for refusing to enter into a relationship with him.

The accused had also injured the girl's brother who had tried to intervene during the attack that took place in March 2021.

The court held that this was a "rarest of the rare case" as per the definition given by the Supreme Court in the Nirbhaya case, special public prosecutor Janak Patel said.

Sarvaiya was booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.

"The court awarded the death sentence and imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on the accused under section 302 of the IPC... It was a kind of murder that shook the entire community and hence, was taken seriously," Patel said.

The convict has been given a month's time to make an appeal in the high court, he said.

The accused and the victim were residents of Jetalsar village in Jetpur taluka of the district. The man had been harassing the victim, and on March 16, 2021, he went to her house with a proposal.

Angered by her refusal, Sarvaiya thrashed the victim and stabbed her multiple times outside her house when she tried to escape.

Shocked by the brutality of the killing, locals had demanded that the accused be given capital punishment and even observed a bandh and took out a protest march.

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Ahmedabad (PTI): The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Gujarat has revealed that more than 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the existing voter list across the state, a release by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has stated.

According to the release issued on Thursday, the SIR exercise started in Gujarat on November 4 with booth-level officers (BLOs) distributing enumeration forms in their designated areas.

The campaign will continue till December 11.

"In the last one month, enumeration forms have been distributed to more than five crore voters registered in the 2025 electoral roll. In most of the 33 districts, 100 per cent of the distribution has been completed. Work on digitising the returned forms is currently underway. So far, the digitisation work has been completed in 12 out of 182 assembly constituencies," it said.

These include Dhanera and Tharad of Banaskantha district, Limkheda and Dahod (ST) of Dahod district, Bayad of Aravalli district, Dhoraji, Jasdan and Gondal of Rajkot district, Keshod of Junagadh district, Mehmadabad of Kheda district, Khambhat of Anand district and Jalalpore of Navsari district.

Dang district is at the forefront in this work with 94.35 per cent digitisation of the counting forms, said the release.

"During this exercise, it was revealed that 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the electoral roll across the state. More than 6.14 lakh voters were found absent from their addresses. It has been noticed that more than 30 lakh voters have permanently migrated," the release said.

BLOs found more than 3.25 lakh voters in the "repeated" category, which means that their names figured at more than one place, the release stated.