Guj: Toddler sexually assaulted, murdered in Surat

Surat: A two-and-a-half-year-old girl was allegedly abducted, sexually assaulted and then smothered to death by an unidentified person in Gujarat’s Surat city, police said on Monday.

The child, daughter of migrant workers from Bihar, had gone missing from outside her home on Thursday and the body was found on Sunday near a factory, located about one km away from their residence, they said.

The police on Monday received the postmortem report which revealed the girl was ”subjected to forceful sexual assault before being smothered to death”, Assistant Commissioner of Police, F-division, J K Pandya said.

The toddler was playing outside her house under Pandesara police station limits when she went missing on Diwali night, an official from Pandesara police station said. A case of kidnapping was then registered and police had launched a massive search operation involving various teams, he said. The body was found on Sunday in bushes near a factory, the official said, adding that efforts were on to nab the culprit.

A case was registered on Sunday against the unidentified culprit under Indian Penal Code Sections 302 (murder) and 363 (kidnapping), and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act were added to the FIR on Monday, the official said.