3-yr-old girl kidnapped, killed in Kapashera, 1 arrested

Police and the family members suspected that the girl was raped before she was murdered, which will be ascertained after the autopsy

A three-year-old girl was allegedly kidnapped from outside her house and killed by a 34-year-old neighbour in Kapashera, southwest Delhi, on Wednesday. Her body was recovered from a drain. Police and the family members suspected that the girl was raped before she was murdered, which will be ascertained after the autopsy reports are available, police officers aware of the matter said on Friday.

The girl’s mother said she was playing in courtyard of the residential complex, which has about 40 rooms. (HT photo)

Deputy commissioner of police (south west) Rohit Meena said that the accused who was identified as Anil Kumar, a construction worker, was arrested on the same day.

He tried to escape from the police custody, following which he was shot in the leg, the officers added.

The 26-year-old mother of the victim told HT that around 6pm, the girl was playing in courtyard of the residential complex, which has about 40 rooms, but later disappeared. “When I started looking for her, people told me that the suspect took her,” she said.

The mother added that she called up the suspect, but he denied that the victim was with him. “When I insisted that people saw him with my daughter, he said he will meet us in half an hour,” the mother said. When he did not come, the family continued the search and then approached police around 9pm.

Investigators scrutinised the CCTV footage and found that at 7.05pm, the accused was seen taking the girl towards a drain in the area, but at 7.25pm, he was seen returning alone, an investigator said on condition of anonymity.

A senior police officer said, “About 30-40 police personnel started searching for the accused. It was found that he was going towards Sohna. “The teams started tracking his location, and at 11.55pm, he was apprehended from inside a bus, which was going towards Kanpur, his native place,” said the DCP, adding that he was brought back to Kapashera.

According to a second investigator, the accused admitted that he killed the girl. “He said that he dumped the body into a drain, about two kilometres away from the residential complex. The body was found around 2am on Thursday,” the investigator said. “The clothes on the body were dishevelled,” he added.

Meanwhile, when the investigators were busy trying to recover the body from the drain, the accused allegedly managed to steal the service revolver from a constable and tried to flee. “He fired on the police team, which fired back in self-defence, and in the process, he got hit by a bullet in his right foot. The suspect was taken to Indira Gandhi Hospital,” Meena said.

The accused allegedly told police that after kidnapping the girl, he took her to a hiding place near the drain where he raped her and then strangled her to death. “However, a medical board was formed to conduct the post-mortem examination on Friday,” he said.

The second investigator said that the accused was close to the victim’s family and even borrowed about ₹200 from them on Wednesday morning.

The victim’s mother further alleged that they were informed by the locals on Thursday that the suspect tried to sexually assault a two-year-old girl in February. However, the matter was not reported. “We were told by his landlord that he was caught in an intoxicated state inside a room with a crying baby. The house owned heard her loud cries and saved her. He was let off with a warning and the girl’s parents did not press any charges,” she said.

Talking about her daughter, the mother said that she was a “bright and very sensible girl”. “She used to go to playschool since she was 18 months old,” the mother said.

The victim is survived by her parents and one-year-old sister. Her body was taken to the family’s native village in Uttar Pardesh.