Express News Service
CHENNAI: A day after the body of a three-year-old missing girl was found in the Tiruvottiyur dump yard with signs of torture, police have arrested a 26-year-old woman and her father who were neighbours of the child’s family. Police said the woman had suffocated the child to death after the child had raised an alarm when the woman took the silver ornaments the child was wearing.
While a preliminary death report issued by a government hospital mentioned the possibility of sexual assault, senior police officers said the aspect is still under probe.
The accused K Revathy (26) is the mother of two children aged below five years and her father Sekar (60) helped her in disposing the body in a corporation garbage bin. Revathy was staying in the flat opposite the child’s family.
On Saturday, police said Revathy had taken the child to her flat after informing her mother. Since then the child had been missing. On Sunday morning the child’s body was spotted with mouth gagged among garbage dumped by a corporation’s truck from the area.
As the case sent shock waves and opposition leaders, including DMK’s M K Stalin, queued up to meet the bereaved child’s family, police said it was a case of murder for gain and it's not ascertained yet if the child was sexually assaulted.
After taking the child to her flat, Revathy had allegedly taken the silver ornaments the child was wearing. Police said they have recovered these ornaments from a local shop where Revathy had mortgaged them for `2,500.
“As the child started crying, she gagged the child to prevent her from raising an alarm. But in the process she suffocated the child to death. Not knowing how to dispose of the body, Revathy waited till her father returned home.
At around 1.15 pm, Sekar returned home in an inebriated condition and after learning of the incident, he allegedly advised her to pack the body in a shopping bag and dispose it in the dump yard nearby,” said a senior police officer.A case has been registered with the Ennore police station.
