The seven-year-old girl whose body was found dumped on the roof of the local mosque on Sunday was not only raped but also sodomised by gay couple who are relatives.
The accused who were infact in live-in relationship had strangled her to death and then the body was packed in a gunny bag and dumped on the roof of a mosque.
Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ghaziabad Vaibhav Krishna said the accused who are relative (nephew and maternal uncle) committed the crime.
During investigation, police came to know that when the girl was returning home with her brother on the fateful day, she asked him to head towards home alone while she started sipping a fruit drink which she brought from a nearby grocery shop.
Police said the accused lured the girl into their house after they noticed her sitting alone outside their house. The SSP said accused Sheebu then took her into his room and raped her while co-accused Muzeeb sodomised the child. After the dastardly act the accused throttled her to death using a cord from a nearby drain.
The accused kept the body of the victim inside their room till they disposed it off on the roof of the mosque in the wee hours of Saturday last.
The parents of the girl earlier suspected political rivalry behind their
daughter’s murder and rape and had lodged a complaint against the local councillor and his aides. Police said after disposing the body and seeing that victim parents are implicating political rivals for rape and murder the accused got quite convinced that course of investigation has be diverted.
However, when police interrogated Muzeeb on suspicion, he broke down and confessed to his crime and also revealed involvement of co-accused after which the second accused was also arrested. Police have recovered the cord, bed-sheet, pant and underwear of the accused. Earlier postmortem report conducted on the girl revealed that the victim was sexually assaulted before being killed. “A case was registered under sections 303, 364, 376, 377 and 3/4 of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO) Act. The CCTV footages recovered from the area also helped the police in cracking the case”, the SSP added.