The autopsy report claimed the child was raped and strangulated to death, and her body was found dumped in a sack in a marshy area in Kochi.
A five-year-old girl was brutally raped and strangled to death after she was abducted by a migrant worker from her house in Kerala’s Kochi on Friday, news agency PTI reported citing the police.
The autopsy report claimed the child was raped and strangulated to death, and her body was found dumped in a sack in a marshy area behind a local market in the nearby Aluva on Saturday. The accused has been arrested later in the day.
“We received the complaint at 7.10pm and an FIR was registered before 8pm on Friday. Our team checked the CCTV camera footage and found that the child was with the labourer. We apprehended him at 9.30pm itself. However, he was in an inebriated state and the child was not with him,” PTI quoted Ernakulam Rural SP Vivek Kumar as saying.
The victim was a daughter of a migrant couple from Bihar. She had gone missing from her house at the Garage junction on Friday evening.
The police said her body was found dumped in a sack in a marshy area behind a local market. The girl was brutally assaulted and sexually abused before being dumped.
How police traced the girl’s body
The police said initially on Friday night, they found it difficult to interrogate and gather details from the accused who was intoxicated. “On Saturday morning, he confessed to the crime. However, he also tried to mislead the investigation team,” Kochi Range DIG, Srinivas A, told reporters.
Earlier in the day, locals told the cops of seeing the child with the migrant worker near the market area on Friday. Police rushed to the spot, searched the area along with the locals, and recovered the girl’s body.
The people added that the land behind the market is an isolated area and is also a waste dump site. The area was frequented by anti-social elements and alcohol and drug consumption was rampant there, they said.
Meanwhile, the Kerala Police posted an apology to the family of the victim on all its social media handles saying that their efforts to reunite the child with her parents proved unsuccessful.
Nithin Rosh