A special SC/ST court in UP's Hathras district found the main defendant guilty of the 2020 murder of a 19-year-old Dalit girl, more than two years after the incident made national headlines. However, the court found the three other defendants innocent of all counts. The court declared that only Sandeep had been found guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder "but not rape," and had been given a life sentence. The other three defendants were Ravi, LuvKush, and Ramu.
On September 14, 2020, the victim's family had alleged that the girl was dragged into a farm and assaulted by four upper-caste men at a village under Chandpa police limits. She was taken to Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital for treatment, but eventually she died on September 29 due to multiple fractures, deep gashes on the body and tongue, and paralysis. In her dying declaration before a magistrate in Aligarh, she had “named the four accused”. Her family had then alleged that she was gang-raped.
The hasty cremation of the victim's body after midnight in a public field close to their home contributed to the uproar. The local authorities, according to her relatives, "forced" them to quickly and quietly perform her final rites. They said that it was done "without their consent" and "they were not even permitted to bring the body home one last time. But, according to the police, the cremation was performed "in accordance with the family's wishes".