9-year-old girl kidnapped, killed in east Delhi village
Four alleged kidnappers, who live in the same neighbourhood as the girl’s family, have been arrested in connection with the kidnap and murder.
The body of a nine-year-old girl, who was kidnapped from east Delhi’s Khichripur three days ago, was found in the sugarcane fields of a village in Modinagar, near Ghaziabad, on Friday morning, the police said, adding that the autopsy has ruled out sexual assault.
Four alleged kidnappers, who live in the same neighbourhood as the girl’s family, have been arrested in connection with the kidnap and murder.
The arrested persons were identified by their first names -- Johnny alias Shiva, the key suspect, his cousin Naresh, Kailash and Tarun. “In the kidnapping and murder case of Kalyanpuri, four persons have been arrested and the weapon of the offence has been recovered,” said deputy commissioner of police (east) Deepak Yadav.
Police said the four had kidnapped the girl, who was playing outside her home, to demand a ransom from her family.
However, when they learnt that police had leads that could end in their arrest, the men panicked and allegedly killed the girl by smashing her head with an iron rod, the police said.
“They killed the girl and threw her body in the sugarcane fields. The body was recovered after the interrogation of the arrested suspects,” the officer said.
Violence in area
As news of the girl’s murder spread through the neighbourhood, violence broke out by evening, with several people pelting stones at police personnel, alleging that the police had not taken the kidnapping complaint seriously and it was their laxity that led to her murder.
A couple of police vehicles were damaged in the stone pelting. At least three persons were detained for the violence while police presence in the neighbourhood was intensified to maintain law and order.
A senior police officer said it was a blind kidnapping case and the investigating team had been trying to gather leads from the day the case was registered.
“The CCTV footage helped us get some leads about the suspects but their whereabouts were not known... We tracked them down using the IMEI numbers of their cellphones, but by the time we could arrest him and the other three suspects, they had already killed the girl,” said the officer, who asked not to be named.