Missing 7-yr-old was raped before murder, neighbour arrested
The seven-year-old missing girl, whose decomposed body was found 10 days ago inside a trunk dumped in a drain in northeast Delhi’s Usmanpur, was raped before the murder, police said. The police on Friday claimed to have solved the kidnapping, rape and murder case with the arrest of the girl’s 25-year-old neighbour.
AK Singla, deputy commissioner of police (northeast), said the arrested man, Ibral, has disclosed that after kidnapping the girl, he took her to his home and raped her. When the girl started crying and told him that she will tell her parents about the sexual assault, he panicked and smothered her to death. “Ibral claims that he was drunk at the time of the crime,” said Singla.
Fearing that leaving the girl’s body at home will land him in jail, Ibral changed the girl’s clothes, wrapped the body in a blanket and put it inside a trunk, said police. “He spent the night at home,” said a senior investigating officer.
The next morning, around 5am, he dumped the trunk near the fifth pusta drain in Usmanpur, the officer said.
After dumping the body, Ibral returned home and continued his normal life. He even joined the girl’s parents in search for the missing girl.
After two days, Ibral went to Loni in Ghaziabad where his mother and sister were staying. Unable to bear the guilt, Ibral told his mother about the crime he committed. His mother reprimanded him and asked him to leave home. She did not inform anybody about her son’s crime.
Ibral stayed at different hideouts in Delhi and Loni until he was arrested from Loni on Wednesday. The girl went missing on June 21 while she was playing outside her home in Gamri village near Shahdara. On June 28, the police control room was informed about a trunk that was floating in a drain at Kartar Nagar area in Usmanpur. The caller claimed that a human leg was dangling out of the box. The girl’s decomposed body was found inside.
Teams of the northeast district police were clueless about the killer when they began their probe. Except the pink kurta-pyjama, the girl was wearing, and a blanket, in which her body was wrapped in, the police had nothing else to reach the killer.
“The girl’s family said that it did not belong to them and that she was wearing a different set of clothes the day she went missing,” said the investigator.
A woman in the neighbourhood told the police that the clothes belonged to Ibral’s sister. Cops reached Ibral’s home and found it locked. They then met his mother, who told them about the crime. “We caught him and he confessed to the crime,” said the officer.
Ibral works as a construction worker. His wife left him six months ago.