A court in Madagascar has sentenced a man to surgical castration for the rape of a child in 2024, a judicial official said, in the first such measure on the Indian Ocean island.
The case arose from the rape and attempted murder of a six-year-old girl in Imerintsiatosika, a municipality 30 km west of the capital Antananarivo, Didier Razafindralambo, the attorney general at the Court of Appeal, said on Thursday.
The person prosecuted in this case was sentenced by the Court to life imprisonment with hard labour, accompanied by castration, he said in a video statement released to media by the ministry of justice.
The punishment was introduced last year as part of a 2024 law in Madagascar addressing rapes of minors aged 10 and below. The government said it introduced the law because the courts had recorded many such cases.
Todays decision is a strong and significant response from the justice system, intended also to serve as a warning to anyone with similar malicious intentions, Razafindralambo said.
