Patna, July 21: A 10-year-old schoolgirl was allegedly raped and murdered at Rajpur in Rohtas district, around 150km west of Patna.
The girl had stepped out on Saturday afternoon to look for her family’s missing goat. When she did not return till 6pm, her family went looking for her. They found her nude body from bushes nearby on Sunday morning.
Agitated over the incident, residents laid siege to the police station, shouted slogans against the police administration and demanded immediate arrest of the culprits. They also put up a blockade, disrupting traffic on the Rajpur-Dehri-on-Sone road.
The police tried to break the blockade but were at the receiving end of people’s wrath. The agitators overturned a police patrol car and set it on fire. Outnumbered, the police beat a hasty retreat. Later, Nokha inspector Ravi Shanker rushed to the spot with reinforcements and pacified the protesters by pledging that the accused would be brought to book within 24 hours and the case put up for speedy trial.
Police said the victim was a Class VI student of a government middle school in Rajpur. Her body had bruises and injury marks and lacked clothing. There were bloodstains on her private parts. “Prime facie, it appears she was raped and killed,” station house officer (SHO) of Rajpur police station Satish Kumar said. A red-coloured gamchha (piece of cloth that serves as a towel) was found around the girl’s neck. She may have been strangulated and her body dumped.
“The police have some clues about the suspects and raids are on to apprehend them,” SHO Kumar today said over phone. The girl’s body had been sent to the Sadar hospital in Sasaram for post-mortem. “An autopsy will reveal whether the girl was sexually assaulted before the murder or not,” he said. The statement of the girl’s father, a carpenter, was recorded. “We suspected foul play when she didn’t return till 8pm. We were looking for her. We planned to approach the police in the morning but found her dead in a nearby bush,” the SHO quoted him as saying.
In April, a Class IX student of a government school in Mohania was raped by two youths when she had gone to Dehri-on-Sone to attend a function.
