Amidst nationwide outrage over the brutal gang-rape and murder of a minor girl in a Kashmiri temple, another similar incident has come to light from Gujarat's Surat after the police and doctors confirmed rape on girl who was found dead with 86 injury marks earlier this month.
“The body was recovered by the side of a highway. The girl was sexually assaulted and murdered on April 5," city's police commissioner Satish Sharma told Reuters.
He added the victim — who was 11, has not yet been identified and that police from Gujarat's neighbouring states have been asked to help trace her family.
The incident comes at a time when the nation is witnessing widespread protests against the government's alleged inaction in the rape-and-murder of an eight-year-old nomadic girl in Jammu and Kashmir's Kathua district.
Meanwhile, authorities in Surat have launched a massive operation to ascertain the identity of the girl. A reward of Rs 20,000 has also been announced to anyone who has information on girl’s identity. Around 1,200 posters have also been circulated across the city for this purpose.
According to a report, the postmortem examination of the victim revealed that the girl had 86 injury marks on her body. It is believed that she was brutally tortured by her assailant for over eight to ten days before being murdered.
She must have been confined to some place and tortured by the assailant,” deputy commissioner of police, zone II, Vidhi Chaudhary said.
The postmortem examination revealed that the injuries were not fresh. The injury caused in her private parts was severe and had been inflicted a few days ago, police said. “It seems a stick like object had been inserted in her private parts. Like other injuries, the wound in her private parts is of a few days old. The girl was subjected to severe torture before being killed,” police said.
Police have registered a case of rape and also booked the unidentified accused under The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act.
The incident in Surat bears a stark and a tragic resemblance to the rape-and-murder of an eight-year-old nomadic girl who was brutally raped and murdered in January this year in J&K’s Kathua.
According to the chargesheet filed by the J&K police, a retired revenue official, Sanji Ram, hatched a plan to dislodge the nomadic Bakarwal community from Rasana area in Kathua district. To execute his plan, Ram took Special Police Officer Deepak Khajuria (Deepu) and his juvenile nephew in confidence.
Fifty-year-old Ram, along with his 19-year-old nephew and four others, including two special police officer abducted the victim when she had approached them to inquire about her horses.
For the next four days, the girl was repeatedly raped and tortured by Ram and his accomplices.
Her body was dumped in Rassana forest in Kathua district on January 15. Two days later, the body of the girl was recovered from the jungle on January 17, a week after she went missing while grazing horses in the forest area.
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