BHUBANESWAR : Barely a year after the sexual assault and murder of a minor girl in Nayagarh’s Jadupur village rocked the State, a six-year-old girl who had gone missing from the Naxal-affected Banigochha police limits of the district has been found murdered. Her body was recovered on Wednesday.
Nayagarh Police arrested a 21-year-old youth on charges of killing the minor who belonged to Dhundugadia village under Banigochha police limits.
After her mysterious disappearance on June 12, the victim’s parents lodged a missing complaint a day later. Based on the report, a case was registered on the same day and two teams were formed to trace the minor girl. “A dog squad was also pressed into the operation and we zeroed in on the accused since many children in the village used to visit him to watch videos on his smart phone,” Nayagarh SP Siddharth Kataria said. The accused, identified as Sagar Dalei, was working as a labourer in Tamil Nadu and had returned home after lockdown was imposed.
According to preliminary investigation, Dalei reportedly kidnapped the girl on June 12, killed her the same day before disposing of the body few metres away from his house. In his statement before the police, the accused confessed to strangulating the six-year-old as he had past enmity with her father. “The girl’s body has been sent for postmortem and only after receiving the report, we will be able to ascertain whether she was strangulated or any weapon was used to kill her. Besides, her autopsy report will also reveal if she was sexually assaulted before being murdered,” said Kataria.
Another minor girl in Nayagarh murdered after abduction
During Dalei’s interrogation, he led police to a spot inside the forest and the girl’s body was recovered in presence of an Executive Magistrate. Police sources said, there are only 10 houses in the village and the accused tried to mislead the villagers by telling them that their presiding deity might have taken her and she will return on her own in seven days.
Dhundugadia is situated in an interior forested region and police were able to conduct search only during the day time. On July 23 last year, skeletal remains of a five-year-old girl were recovered in Nayagarh’s Jadupur village. She was allegedly sexually assaulted before being brutally murdered.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT), constituted to probe the incident which led to state-wide outrage, could crack the case. Facing heat over the botched investigation, the then Nayagarh SP Pratyush Diwakar was shifted out of the district.
According to the missing child portal, 13,018 children are missing in Odisha. About 1,753 went missing in the State in the last one year and 139 over last 30 days. Odisha Police managed to rescue only 598 children in last one year and 56 in last 30 days.