Body of 6-year-old found hanging from tree; rape suspected

LUCKNOW: Body of a six-year-old girl, who was missing from Madiaon since March 15, was found hanging from a tree in the thickets of a Maal village (about 30 km from Madiaon) here on Sunday, police said.

Inspector in-charge of Madiaon police station Amar Nath Yadav said the girl, a class 2 student of a private school in Madiaon, did not return home from school on March 15. He said the girl’s father, a mason, had lodged an FIR of her kidnapping the same night after not finding her anywhere.

The six-year-old child’s body was found near a neighbour couple’s house in their native Lodhkheda village of Maal.

“While the family and police were searching for the girl, her decomposed body was found hanging from a tree in Kolwa forest area in Maal on Sunday,” Yadav said.

He said the girl was in school uniform and her belt was found tied around her neck. The body’s condition suggested that she was killed immediately after her disappearance on March 15, Yadav said. On Sunday the child’s father alleged that she was murdered after being raped but police have ruled out rape.

The cops have taken the neighbour couple – Brijesh and his wife Asha -- into custody for interrogation after they were accused by the girl’s father of being involved in the crime.

The girl’s father also accused the police of being negligent for “ignoring his charge against the neighbour couple”. Madiaon police had taken the couple for interrogation on March 16 but later freed them. The girl’s father claimed that Brijesh and Asha committed the crime for revenge. He alleged that the couple had earlier threatened to kidnap his child when their 17-yearold daughter had herself gone missing, following harassment by them, on February 15.

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He said the couple had then accused him of being involved in their daughter’s disappearance, but she had later confessed that she went away on her own will.

Meanwhile, the neighbor couple’s daughter again ‘disappeared’ on March 10 and has not been found as yet.

The police inspector said that an FIR of the girl’s kidnapping under IPC section 363 was lodged initially, but the case would be now altered according to the post-mortem findings.

He said a recommendation has been sent to the district magistrate to get the post-mortem done by a panel of doctors and that he was awaiting the report to see if there was sexual assault.