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Man arrested for 2-year-old’s death in Pune

Prakash was arrested from Bundgarden area. The girl was alive when found at the railway yard at 8:30am on Tuesday by officials of Government Railway Police (GRP) and Railway Protection Force (RPF).

Updated on: Aug 29, 2019, 16:12:38 IST
Hindustan Times, Pune | By
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The Bund Garden police on Wednesday arrested one person for the kidnapping and murder of the two-year-old girl who was found in a railway coach in Pune on Tuesday.

The girl was alive when found at the railway yard at 8:30am on Tuesday by officials of Government Railway Police (GRP) and Railway Protection Force (RPF). (HT file photo)
The girl was alive when found at the railway yard at 8:30am on Tuesday by officials of Government Railway Police (GRP) and Railway Protection Force (RPF). (HT file photo)

The arrested was identified as Prakash Balu Gaikwad, 19, according to senior inspector Sunil Tambe of Bundgarden police station.

According to the police, the deceased’s father is the not the biological parent. The parents of the victim stay on the footpath outside the rear compound of railway hospital and do menial jobs for a living

Prakash was arrested from Bundgarden area. The girl was alive when found at the railway yard at 8:30am on Tuesday by officials of Government Railway Police (GRP) and Railway Protection Force (RPF). She was taken to Sassoon General Hospital where she succumbed to her injuries at 1:30pm on Tuesday.

“He (the arrested person) said that the child’s father and another man roughed him up over a trivial issue two days ago. That had enraged him. So he picked up the child while she was asleep with her mother,” said sub-inspector Priyanka Gaikwad of Bundgarden police station who is investigating the case.

The police recovered CCTV footage of the man carrying the girl and then returning in the vicinity without her, according to an officer part of the probe team. The man is suspected to have banged the girl’s head against a hard surface which eventually caused her death.

Tambe said that the victim’s father is a drunkard. The mother of the child was kept in the police station and given food and a place to sleep while the investigation was on.

Even as the initial suspicion of sexual assault was ruled out by a team of doctors who performed the post-mortem, the doctors confirmed that the child died of a head injury, according to the police.

“We are checking which of the sections of Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act will be added to the case as he bit the child,” said Gaikwad.

Relevant sections of POCSO Act were invoked in the case which was initially registered under Sections 363 (kidnapping) and 302 (murder) of Indian Penal Code at Bundgarden police station. Earlier, an accidental death report was registered at the Pune GRP station.