UTHAMAPALAYAM: The Theni district police on Thursday arrested three youngsters for alleged rape and murder of a 10-year-old schoolgirl.
Police sources said that a special team arrested three persons identified as Kumaresan (19), Ravi (23) and Sundarraj (25), who were apparently herding livestock in the area.
G Nandini, a resident of the Kamatchipuram Pattalammam Temple area, studying in Class V at a nearby school, had been missing since Monday. According to her parents, she had gone to a relative’s place after coming from the school, but as her parents and relatives could not find her anywhere, they reported a missing case to the Odaipatti police.
While the police were trying to trace her, the girl’s body was recovered from a well in the area on Wednesday. The postmortem report revealed that the girl was raped and strangulated to death.
On Thursday, the girl’s relatives and villagers staged a protest demanding swift action by the police. The police claimed that the three had confessed to kidnapping and raping the girl in a field. They threw her body into the well after strangulating her to death.