Three-year-old girl raped, suffocated and thrown into drain | Delhi News

DCP (South West) Manoj Meena said they received a PCR call at 8.51 pm on Wednesday. “The caller said a minor girl was kidnapped by a neighbour from our gali (side road). He also described the man – he was wearing a T-shirt with ‘Shivaji’ written on it and shorts,” Meena said. “We immediately sent a team to the scene and spoke to the child’s mother.” Police filed a complaint of kidnapping.

The mother told police that the family had been living in a rented apartment in the area for five years. “It is a large building where one-room apartments with kitchen and bathroom are rented to families of migrant workers,” police said. “The child’s family is small… Her mother is a housewife, her father a contract worker.”

At around 6 pm on May 22, the mother told police, “I was washing dishes outside… I went to our room and when I came out, she was gone.” After further investigation, the mother claimed she found out that a man living in the building next door had kidnapped her, police said. The kidnapper, police found, is a construction worker from Kanpur who does daily wage jobs.

Police swung into action and obtained CCTV footage of the entire neighbourhood. “…on a camera, the accused was seen walking with the girl towards the ‘ganda nala’ (dirty drain) at 7.05 pm. The same camera recorded him returning alone at 7.25 pm,” Meena said. Police then found that the accused was “heading towards Sohna in Gurgaon” and followed his trail. They also started checking all vehicles, including buses, to ensure that he could not escape. “Finally, the accused was nabbed from a Kanpur-bound bus at 11.55 pm on Thursday,” the DCP said.

During initial questioning, the accused denied any knowledge. “But after prolonged questioning, he broke down… He said he had killed the girl,” police claimed. The accused also led the police team to the spot where he had dumped the body, they said. “We started searching… searched the drain, which was filled with mud. There were also thick bushes and heaps of garbage in the area. Finally, we found the body in the drain,” a police official involved in the search operation told The Indian Express.

“It took us more than an hour… we had to use floodlights because it was already pitch black.”

The accused was present at the scene. “As soon as the body was found, he suddenly rushed at a policeman, grabbed a loaded service revolver… and fired a few shots while trying to escape. Three other policemen immediately opened fire on him and one bullet hit his right leg just below the knee. He was overpowered. No policeman was hit when he opened fire,” a police official said.

Police took him to a nearby hospital where his condition has stabilised. The body has been sent to AIIMS for an autopsy and the report shows that the child was raped and suffocated, police said.

A relative of the victim told The Indian Express: “She was playing outside, as usual… no one could have imagined that someone could be so brutal and commit such a heinous crime,” he said. The girl, the relative said, was recently admitted to a nearby Anganwadi school. “Our child is gone. No one can bring her back now.”