Bhopal: A special court here has awarded life term to six people for raping a 12-year-old girl who later became pregnant.

The court specifically mentioned that the arrested persons will remain behind the bars for their whole life.

Special judge Savita Dube awarded the punishment on March 12 and also imposed a total fine of Rs 1.20 lakh on the six accused.

The DNA report conclusively established that one of the accused was the biological father of the aborted foetus of the girl, a release issued by police headquarters said today.

On November 3, 2017, a member of NGO Railway Childline Service spotted the girl begging at a railway station, following which a police officer questioned her and later handed her over to a women care institution.

As the girl was not in good health, she was taken to a hospital where the medical examination revealed that she was three to four months pregnant, a police official said. Later, due to certain complications, the foetus was aborted.

The girl later told the police that she was raped by some men in a dilapidated structure near the railway station, some weeks before she was spotted by the NGO member.

The Government Railway Police (GRP) subsequently registered a case and the accused were arrested on the basis of leads, the official said.

The samples of the girl's foetus and other body parts and that of the accused were then sent to the Forensic Science Laboratory at Sagar for DNA tests, which established the involvement of the accused in the crime.

Based on the FSL report and other investigations, the court awarded the sentence to the six accused, identified as Salman, Manish Yadav, Mangal Thakur, Rajesh Takla, Salman alias Shadab and Arjun, while pronouncing them guilty under relevant Indian Penal Code sections and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.  PTI