Missing 9-yr-old girl’s mutilated body found in Ludhiana; 2 held

LUDHIANA:The mutilated body of a nine-year-old girl, missing for nine days, was found among bushes at a vacant plot in Durga Colony of Dhandari Khurd on Monday. Stray dogs were feasting on the body. Police have arrested the victim Rani’s ‘employers’ — a grocer and his wife of the same colony — for murder on a complaint from her father, Jiten Ram.

The police action came only after residents of the area staged a protest against the accuses, Ranjit Kumar and his wife Priya. The situation was tense with heavy police deployment.

“On December 16, Priya took my daughter claiming she had work for her. That was the last time I saw her. Priya claimed she had sent her to collect cow dung cakes. She refused to own up any responsibility for my daughter’s disappearance,” said Ram.

“When we did not find her, we filed a complaint at the Sahnewal police station that she had been kidnapped. The police registered a case under Section 346 (wrongful confinement in secret) of the IPC against unidentified people,” the father said, adding had the police taken timely action, his daughter could have been saved. On Monday, an area resident alerted them about the body.

Rani was the youngest of six siblings. The family belongs to Bihar’s Darbangha. Ram said the accused used to take his daughter forcibly to work. HTC