Gujarat: Eight-year-old girl gangraped, bludgeoned to death in Rajkot; three held

Rajkot: An eight-year-old girl was allegedly kidnapped, raped and bludgeoned to death with a stone by three persons in Gujarat’s Rajkot city, police said on Monday.

The police on Monday arrested all three accused, who are known to the girl’s father, an official said.

The child’s body was found in an isolated spot behind a railway station in the city on October 7, a day after she was reported missing, he said.

The city crime branch zeroed in on the accused persons based on CCTV footage and intelligence inputs and arrested them. The trio were known to the victim’s father, additional commissioner of police Vidhi Chaudhary said.

“The accused raped and murdered the victim by bashing her head in with a stone. The accused killed the girl as they were known to her father and feared that she might tell him about them,” Chaudhary told reporters.

Two of the accused had fled the city after the body was found, as they feared arrest, she said.

As per a release issued by the city crime branch, the CCTV footage showed the victim walking with one of the accused on the night she went missing from her home. She was lured by the accused, who took her to an isolated place where he was joined by the others.

The trio took the girl into the bushes and raped her before killing her using a big stone, it stated.