circumstances of the matter, the High Court was of the opinion that the sentence of death should be confirmed, that there were no mitigating circumstances to be found, and that there were many aggravating circumstances as the appellant was known to R, who reposed complete trust and faith in him and willingly allowed him to take her along, but she was raped and murdered in the most gruesome manner and her body was dumped into the stream. The court observed that “…when an innocent and helpless girl of 5 was subject to such a barbaric treatment by a person who was in a position of her trust, his culpability assumes the proportion of extreme depravity and arouses a sense of revulsion in the mind of an ordinary person.” The motivation of the appellant, the vulnerability of the deceased R, the enormity of the crime and the execution thereof, the Court considered the case as falling in the “rarest of the rare” category, and warranting the sentence of death to deter others from committing atrocious crimes, and to give emphatic expression to society’s abhorrence of such crimes. 24. Challenging the order on sentence, the appellant has argued that by passing a common order on conviction and sentencing, the High Court has contravened Section 235(2) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (for short, ‘CrPC’) by not hearing the Criminal Appeal Nos. 1473-1474 of 2017 Page 21 of 30