E-Paper
Uncle arrested for sexual assault, murder of 2.5-year-old girl in Pune
Her body was found in a sewage canal located at a distance from the labour camp where she lived in Sangvi
A 19-year-old has been arrested by the Pimpri-Chinchwad police for the sexual assault and murder of a 2.5-year-old girl in Sangvi.
He is the younger brother of the deceased girl’s father. The youth was among the four people detained by the police, hours after the case was registered on Tuesday morning.
“After checking his phone and its records, we found that he was watching illicit videos till late at night. However, he kept of telling us that he was asleep by 10pm,” said senior police inspector Prabhakar Shinde of Sangvi police station who was investigating the case.
The girl’s body was found in a sewage canal located at a distance from the labour camp where she lived. He confessed to having committed the crime during interrogation.
The arrested lived in the room next door to the house in the labour camp where the child lived with her parents. The door of their room was not locked completely and he entered the room and picked up his sleeping niece, according to the police.
The police had suspected that the culprit was someone known to the victim as the area where she was picked up from is in a crowded spot from where, one cannot enter or leave without getting noticed, according to the police.
The girl’s body was found on Tuesday morning, hours after she was killed. After conducting a post-mortem, the doctors told the police that she had been sexually assaulted and was strangled to death.
A case was registered under Sections 450 (house-trespass in order to commit offence punishable with imprisonment for life), 302 (murder), 363 (kidnapping), 366 (kidnapping, abducting or inducing woman to compel her marriage, etc), 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder), 376(a) (punishment for causing death or resulting in persistent vegetative state of victim), 376(a)(b) of the Indian Penal Code along with Sections 4, 5 and 6 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offence (POCSO) Act registered at Sangvi police station on Tuesday evening.