BENGALURU: A six-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted and murdered by her neighbour at Veerabhadra Nagar in Girinagar police station limits.
The incident is suspected to have occurred on Thursday but came to light only Sunday evening after neighbours found the decomposed body in a box and alerted the police .The suspect is Anil, a tractor driver.
The assailant had allegedly burnt the girl’s body after smothering her. But police are not ruling out the involvement of others in the crime.The victim who is the daughter of daily wage worker couple, had been missing for four days. She was studying in Class 1 in a government school in Hosakerehalli.
A senior police officer said that the suspect Anil was staying in a rented house for the last seven years. His wife had gone to her hometown Kalaburagi recently.
On Thursday, the girl was playing outside the house and went missing after a while. Her parents, who searched for her till evening, filed a missing person’s complaint on Friday. On Sunday evening, Anil’s neighbour Prakash called him over phone to inform him about lights switched on in the house.
Anil told Prakash that he had forgotten to switch off the lights and asked him to switch off the mains in the house. He immediately disconnected the call after saying that he had gone to Kalaburagi.
Prakash and his wife Manjula opened the window using an iron rod and sensed foul smell emanating from the house. The house was locked from outside and they alerted other neighbours who helped break open the lock. When he went inside, Prakash found a box with the girl’s hand sticking out. Shocked, he ran out and alerted Girinagar police.
“Preliminary investigations have revealed that the assailant sexually assaulted the girl before killing her. He set her ablaze to destroy evidence. We have formed teams to nab the accused. We are also investigating whether others are involved,” the police officer added. The body of the girl was shifted to KIMS for postmortem.