India, Feb. 21 -- A special court in Uttar Pradesh's Banda on Friday sentenced a former Junior Engineer (JE) of the Irrigation Department and his wife to death for the sexual exploitation of 33 minor boys - some as young as three - over a decade, officials said.

The POCSO court termed the crimes as "rarest of rare" and held Ram Bhawan and his wife Durgawati guilty of systematically abusing children between 2010 and 2020 and producing child sexual abuse material.

Convicting the duo under provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the court sentenced them to death for offences including aggravated penetrative sexual assault, using a child for pornographic purposes, storage of porno...