The Gujarat High Court on Friday upheld the death sentence for a 22-year-old man who raped and murdered a three-year-old girl in Surat in October 2018, PTI reported. A division bench of Justices Bela Trivedi and AC Rao rejected Anil Yadav’s plea against capital punishment that a special Protection of Children from Sexual Offences court had awarded him.

The girl went missing from her home in Surat’s Godadara area on October 14, 2018. The following day, the police found her body in a locked room in Yadav’s ground-floor apartment in the building where she lived. Initially, Yadav, who knew the family, had joined the search for the child. However, he soon disappeared, The Times of India reported.

On October 20, 2018, Yadav was arrested from his native village in Bihar’s Buxar district, and charged. The trial court framed charges against Yadav this February. It found Yadav guilty and condemned him to death in July.