New Delhi, Feb 8 (PTI): A mother of a juvenile, accused of raping, sodomising and murdering a three-year-old child, has been sentenced to five years in jail by a Delhi court for destroying evidence against her son.

Additional Sessions Judge Rajeev Bansal handed out the sentence to 50-year-old Sunita saying she was aware that her son had raped and murdered the child and she tried to destroy the evidence in order to save him from court's punishment.

"All the circumstances taken together lead one to the only irresistible conclusion that accused Sunita, being mother of the juvenile, knew on July 21, 2007 that the offence of murder had taken place and in order to shield her son from legal punishment, she tried to cause disappearance of the evidence of the offence, which could implicate her son, by concealing his clothes in a park under the bushes which were recovered at her instance," the court said.

It also imposed a fine of Rs 5,000 on the woman

According to prosecution, the 13-year-old juvenile had on July 21, 2007 raped and sodomised the child and thereafter he killed the girl by stuffing a piece of cloth in her mouth.

When Sunita came to know that her son has committed these offences, she removed the blood stains from his clothes and concealed them under bushes in a park to destroy the evidence of the offence to save her son from punishment, it said.

When the child's family started searching her, they found her body on the fourth floor of their building with a piece of cloth stuffed in her mouth and a stone was also lying nearby.

It was brought out that the child was last seen with the juvenile and he was arrested on July 26, 2007 while his mother was arrested a day later.

The case of the juvenile was sent to Juvenile Justice Board as he was a minor, who was later on acquitted from the charges of murder, rape, sodomy and kidnapping the child