Body of missing eight-year-old girl found

A day after an eight-year-old girl went missing from her house in outer Delhi’s Narela, her body was found in a field on Sunday — an incident that prompted the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) to take a suo motu cognizance of the case. The DCW officials said they believe the girl was raped before being murdered.

In a letter issued to Delhi Police, a copy of which was uploaded on Twitter by a DCW member, the commission stated that while the girl’s parents reported her missing on Saturday, the police failed to conduct any searches on that day or the next day.

Deputy commissioner of police (outer north) Gaurav Sharma, however, denied the allegations, saying that a kidnapping case was registered within 30 minutes of the girl’s family filing a missing person’s complaint.

“Our teams launched a search operation and found the girl’s body from a field, which is some distance away from their home. Her clothes were intact and no visible injury marks were found on the body. An autopsy has been conducted. We are waiting for the autopsy report to ascertain the exact cause of death and whether she was raped,” said DCP Sharma.

Police said the girl lived with her parents in Narela. Her father is a small-time spice seller. In their complaint, the girl’s parents told the police that their daughter had gone out to play before going missing on Friday evening. The family members searched for her in the neighbourhood. When they failed to find her, the family members approached the Narela police station on Saturday and filed the complaint, police said.

On Monday, the DCW sent a letter to the DCP and sought details of the investigation into the girl’s murder. DCW member Promila Gupta met the girl’s parents. “It has been stated by the parents that a man named Guddu, suspected by them to be the culprit, had earlier attempted to take the girl away, but was seen by the mother who caught hold of the man and let him go after he profusely apologised. The same man had on past occasions misbehaved with other girls and was a known miscreant,” the DCW’s letter said.