Facing heavy backlash for shoddy investigation, Jharkhand police increased the quantum of their reward to Rs 5 lakh for information on the murder of a young girl in Ranchi, whose headless body was found from a forest in Ormanjhi on Sunday.

Ranchi police, which had earlier announced a reward of Rs 50,000, have so far failed to make any headway in the case. They haven't been able to establish the identity of the deceased too. Soon after the body was recovered, police had announced Rs 25,000 as a reward for any information on the crime. This was later raised to Rs 50,000.

Talking to reporters here after visiting the crime spot in the evening, senior SP S.K. Jha said that they were trying their best to crack the case. “The special investigation team is working 24/7 but unfortunately we haven’t made headway. Hence, we decided to raise the reward to Rs 5 lakh,” he said.

Both ruling and Opposition camps are at loggerheads over the law and order issue in Ranchi and elsewhere in the state ever since the girl was found murdered. Terming it as a bigger incident than Delhi’s Nirbhaya case, Opposition BJP has been staging protests and dharnas almost daily against alleged lawlessness in the state. Various rights groups have also staged protests in Ranchi. Once such protest at Kishoreganj Chowk on Monday turned violent and a pilot car of chief minister Hemant Soren was attacked and a policeman injured.

While the ruling JMM and Congress dubbed the attack as the handiwork of the BJP, the latter accused the state government and police of trying to silence dissent to hide its failures and thwart growing public anger against the ruling regime over deteriorating law and order.

Ranchi police are conducting a separate probe into the attack on th CM’s convoy. They have filed FIRs against 72 named and several unnamed individuals. Close to 30 people have been arrested while Bhairav Singh, considered to be the mastermind of the attack, surrendered in Ranchi civil court on Thursday.

BJP leader of the legislative party Babulal Marandi had said that they would have welcomed it if police investigated the girl's murder and beheading with similar alacrity, criticising the state government for its misplaced priorities.