The Supreme court has today upheld the death penalty for the accused who was proven guilty for allegedly abducting, raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl along with her 7-year-old brother in Coimbatore district of Tamil Nadu in 2010. By pronouncing the death penalty for the accused Manoharan, the apex court has dismissed his second appeal seeking to halt the capital punishment that was awarded to him in 2012 by the Mahila court in Coimbatore.

In October 2010, taxi driver Manoharan had kidnapped the siblings following which he brutally raped the 10-year-old girl and tortured the boy before murdering them by drowning the siblings in the Parambikulam Aliyar canal on October 29th. After having been reported with the crime, the police department had recovered the bodies of the children from the canal and exactly two days after the incident, the police arrested Manoharan and his friend Mohan, who had alleged connection in the crime. On November 9th, 2010 the police had encountered and killed Mohan after he attempted to seize the police vehicle and attacked the authorities while they were taking him to the crime scene for investigations. As Mohan was shot dead by the police, Manoharan was proven guilty for murdering the siblings.

Following the investigations, the Mahila court in Coimbatore pronounced dual death penalty and triple life term imprisonment for Manoharan by citing the seriousness of the crime and after being awarded capital punishment, he appealed in Madras High court to challenge the verdict of Coimbatore court but however, the high court bench had rejected his petition and confirmed the death penalty for Manoharan after which in 2014, he tabled his second appeal petition in Supreme court. After hearing his petition, the apex court refused to rewrite the judgements pronounced by the lower courts in last August during which his legal counsel argued that Manoharan didn't get a proper representation by citing that his lawyers were changing many times during investigations and by observing the notion, country's top court had stayed the verdict till October 16th,2019 for the final time.

By dismissing the arguments and the appeal petitions, the Supreme court's three justices bench headed by Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman had reconfirmed the death penalty on Thursday, 7th Nov 2019. Justices Nariman and Surya Kant have dismissed the review petition while Justice Sanjiv Khanna has expressed a different view. However, by considering the majority judgment, the Supreme court has reconfirmed the death penalty for Manoharan for horribly raping the minor girl. In its final verdict, the bench has observed that capital punishment has been upheld for Manoharan for shocking and cold-blooded offense and crime that he committed.