Man arrested for rape, murder of 15-year-old Dalit girl in Budaun: Police
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh police on Sunday arrested a man in connection with the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Dalit girl, whose body was recovered in the bushes near the railway line in Budaun district a day before, officers said
Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh police on Sunday arrested a man in connection with the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Dalit girl, whose body was recovered in the bushes near the railway line in Budaun district a day before, officers said.
The accused has been identified as Jitendra Yadav, who runs a confectionary store at the Asafpur railway station, near which the body was recovered on Saturday morning, a senior police officer said.
“A case under sections 302 (murder) and 376 (rape) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), along with relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, has been lodged,” said Budaun senior superintendent of police (SSP) Om Prakash Singh. “The accused has confessed to the crime.”
Yadav told the police during interrogation that he abducted the girl while returning home on Friday night, the SSP told reporters. He then took her to a secluded place behind the nearby railway station and raped her. “He strangulated the girl in order to protect his identity,” the SSP added.
Police said they used witnesses’ statements and mobile surveillance data to zero down on the accused.
The minor girl’s body was found in the bushes near the railway station under Faizganj Behta police station limits, on Saturday morning. The girl was a resident of a village located merely 2 km from the crime scene.
The victim’s family members had alleged that the police picked up her body and sent it for post-mortem without informing them. They also claimed that the police had only told them over the phone that their daughter had died in an accident and called them to the post-mortem house to identify the body.