A gruesome murder came to light in Vijayawada on Sunday, 10 November, as a seven-year-old girl, was found dead in her neighbour’s house, nearly fifteen hours after a frantic search was launched. The child's body was found stuffed in a bag, at the residence of the accused, identified as Prakash.
The child’s parents, Anil and Ramanamma, had two sons and a daughter. On Sunday night around 11 pm, Anil, who works at a nearby liquor godown, filed a complaint with the Bhavanipuram police about his missing child.
According to the police, the child had been missing since Sunday evening. “We formed four teams to look for her. We searched everywhere around the locality, we looked into CCTV footage, we looked at major bus and railway stations. We even used drone cameras to see if she might have fallen into a pit or a well, but couldn’t find any clues,” Bhavanipuram sub-inspector Israel told TNM.
Police say that the neighbours and parents were firm that nobody from their locality could be responsible for harming the child. Although the police went ahead and did background checks on some of the neighbours, there were no clues.
Around 4 pm on Sunday evening, Prakash’s wife, who had been out of town and just returned home, found a suspicious sack in the house. On opening it, she found the body of the missing child.
Once the child’s body was found stuffed in a bag in Prakash’s house, the members of the neighbourhood could not contain their rage. “Luckily, one of our teams was in the neighbourhood at the time. Otherwise, we may not have found the accused. The people were furious. We somehow managed to get the accused out of the crowd,” the Bhavanipuram SI said.
"Marks on the child’s neck indicate that she could’ve been asphyxiated, but we’re waiting for the post-mortem report to confirm the cause of death,” he added.
Police say that the motive for the murder is yet to be confirmed. “He (the accused) has been making a lot of claims. We need to cross-check them. We suspect that he might have similarly murdered a mentally unwell child a couple of years back,” police said.
(The article was originally published in The News Minute.)
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