An eight-year-old girl was allegedly kidnapped, raped and bludgeoned to death with a stone in Gujarat’s Rajkot city, police said on Monday (October 9).
The police arrested three people in connection with the incident. All the three accused are known to the girl’s father, an official said.
A day after she was reported missing, the body of the minor was recovered from an isolated place behind a railway station in the city on October 7, he said.
The crime branch launched a manhunt after getting clues from the CCTV footage and intelligence inputs and arrested them.
The trio were known to the victim's father, additional commissioner of police Vidhi Chaudhary said.
Police statement
"The accused raped and murdered the victim by bashing her head in with a stone. The accused killed the girl as they were known to her father and feared that she might tell him about them," Chaudhary said while speaking to the media.
Two of the accused had fled the city after the body was found, as they feared arrest, she added.
According to a release by the city crime branch, the CCTV footage showed the victim walking with one of the accused on the night she went missing from her home.
She was lured by the accused, who took her to an isolated place where he was joined by the others.
The trio took the girl into the bushes and raped her before killing her using a big stone, it stated.
(With PTI inputs)
