PATNA: A 20-year-old man was arrested from Buxar district in Bihar in connection with the rape and murder of a three-year-old girl in Gujarat's Surat, officials said Sunday. The accused Anil Yadav was arrested on Friday.
He was produced before a magistrate in Buxar and taken to Gujarat on Saturday after a transit remand was obtained, Buxar Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Satish Kumar said.
"Yadav was arrested under Dhansoi Police Station limits where a raid was conducted by the Gujarat police team, assisted by the local police. Although the accused was a resident of Itarhi Police Station area, he had been staying away from home," Kumar told PTI over phone.
The Gujarat police team had camped in Buxar for a couple of days before Yadav was finally nabbed, he added.
The three-year-old girl went missing from her house in Godadara locality of Surat and her body was recovered from a locked building in the area on October 16.
Yadav, named as the main suspect in the case, lived on the ground floor of the building where the girl's family, from Maharashtra, lived on the first floor.
The accused has confessed to the crime before the police, Superintendent of Police Upendra Nath Verma said.
Yadav also admitted that he had consumed liquor on that day when he raped and killed the minor girl, he added.
The incident had come close on the heels of the rape of a 14-month-old girl in Sabarkantha which had triggered attacks on migrants from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh across Gujarat.
The ruling BJP has been blaming Congress MLA Alpesh Thakor for the violence while the opposition party has been accusing the party in power of failure to take action.