Jamshedpur, Nov. 20: A nine-year-old Sabar girl, belonging to one of the state's nine particularly vulnerable tribes, was raped and murdered by two youths around midnight today in a village 45km from Jamshedpur, the testimony of the victim's younger sister helping the police to nail the duo by afternoon.

The victim and her seven-year-old sister were walking home from a Karma Puja fair at their Uppar Bandh village in Mosabani, Ghatshila sub-division, around 10.30pm yesterday, when fellow villager Dhano Tuddu and his friend Chhotka Gope, both 24, accosted the girls and struck up a conversation.

Then, asking the younger girl to go home, the duo offered the victim some pakoras (fritters) to lure her into a deserted place where they allegedly raped and strangled her around 1am.

The body, discovered around 6am today, sent ripples of shock in the dirt-poor village as some 100-odd people refused to let police claim the body without extracting assurance from the administration that the bereaved family would get a Birsa Awas Yojana house and free LPG connection. The administration also paid the victim's daily wager father Rs 10,000.

Around 11am, the victim's seven-year-old sister, who had been quiet since the time the girls had parted ways, revealed about the two youths, naming Dhano as a man they knew from the village. By 12.30pm, police had nabbed Dhano, a landed farmer and one of the more comparatively affluent people in the village, and his friend Chhotka, from adjoining Tilbani hamlet.

Mosabani subdivisional police officer (SDPO) Ajit Kumar Vimal confirmed the gang rape and murder of the nine-year-old girl.

"The victim, who belonged to the Sabar community, was raped and strangulated by two youths. Though we had started a hunt for the killers since morning, we got a breakthrough when the victim's younger sister identified Dhano. We arrested Dhano and Chhokta around 12.30pm, who have confessed to the crimes," Vimal said.

According to the SDPO, the duo killed the child when she started crying after the rape. "From their interrogation, we gathered that the duo apprehended that she would reveal to her parents that they had raped her, so they silenced her."

The police have sent the body to a mortuary in Ghatshila for post-mortem after registering a case of rape and murder against Chhotka and Dhano at Mosabani thana. The duo have been sent to Ghatshila subdivisional jail.