CHENNAI: The 22-year-old who has been arrested in the murder of a seven-year-old in Chennai after the burnt remains of her body were found today, had been involved in a previous crime, though not of the magnitude of the murder he has been accused of committing. S Daswant, it emerges, had stolen a bike sometime ago.
Here are five things you need to know about the accused:
- S Daswant was involved in a bike theft some time ago but no police case was registered, as his parents pleaded with the complainants and convinced them not to seek legal action.
- After the seven-year-old girl went missing, police came across the victim of the bike complaint in the course of their enquiries, and it is he who tipped off the sleuths about Daswant’s past crime. This got the police to mark him out as a suspect in the missing girl case.
- The accused, Daswant, had in fact spoken to TV channels the day before he was arrested, pretending to be just another neighbour giving a sound byte to mediapersons looking for information.
- Daswant, according to the police, had killed the little girl on February 5, and kept the body hidden in his house for a day. Later, he managed to take the body out in a travel bag, unnoticed by anyone, and kept in under a bridge in Pallavaram. The next day, he went there and burnt the body, after which he himself called the police control room pretending to be just a passer-by who was informing the law enforcement authorities.
- Daswant is a mechanical engineer, who is unemployed. Police said he had killed the neighbour girl in house after trying to sexually assault her, when his parents were away.