Kendrapada: The ad hoc additional district and sessions judge, (fast track special court), Jajpur has sentenced a 31-year-old man to rigorous life imprisonment on Saturday for raping and murdering a 17-year-old college student, whose body was found in a septic tank of a govt school in 2016 at a village in Jajpur district.The court also imposed a fine of Rs10,000 on the convict and failure to pay that amount would result in his sentence being increased by six months.Pronouncing the verdict in the case, judge Bijay Kumar Jena sentenced the man to life imprisonment under Sections 376 (rape), 302 (murder), 364 (kidnapping) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the IPC and Section 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, on charges of kidnapping, raping and murdering the minor girl nine years ago.The victim, whose father was a peon at a local school, was a student of Plus II Arts.As per the chargesheet filed by police, on Jan 3, 2016, the convict kidnapped the girl and took her to the school where he raped and murdered her. He then dumped the body in the septic tank.The incident came to light the next day when police received a complaint from the school’s headmaster who alleged that a foul smell was coming from the tank. After a thorough search, police found the body. Once her parents identified the body, police launched an investigation and on Jan 7, 2016, he was arrested.Before dumping the body, he stole the gold ornaments the victim was wearing. He also stole her ATM card with which he withdrew money later that night at Jajpur road. Police scanned through the CCTV footage of the ATM booth which helped in tracking him down.As many as 40 witnesses deposed in the case in the court. “After relying on the evidence of the witnesses, 12 documents, including the postmortem report, and 10 material objects, the court convicted the accused and sentenced him to rigorous life imprisonment,” Rajendra Prasad Nayak, the special public prosecutor of the court, said.“We argued before the court to give capital punishment to the convict. But the court stated that this case does not come under the purview of the ‘rarest of the rare’ case category and rejected our plea,” Nayak added.