9-yr-old Surat girl raped, body found with 86 injuries in cricket ground

Surat: As the country struggles to come to terms with the brutality of gangrape and murder of 8-year-old girl in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathu, another horrific incident has emerged from Surat in Gujarat, the Prime Minister’s home state, where a 9-year-old girl's body has been found with 86 injuries, including some on her private parts, reports news agency ANI.

After five-hour long postmortem, it was revealed that the girl was raped and tortured for at least eight days. She was strangled to death. Samples have been sent for forensics tests to determine whether she was drugged or not.

Ganesh Govekar, Forensic Head, Civil Hospital, said, “The girl's body had 86 injury marks including ones on her private parts. Samples have been taken for forensic test to ascertain whether she was drugged or not.”

Forensic Head of the Civil Hospital told NDTV that most injuries seemed to have been caused by a wooden weapon.

The body was found on April 6 at a cricket ground in Surat's Bhestan area, but the girl has not been identified yet.

“The body of the 11-year-old girl was found around 6 am near a road next to a cricket ground by people on their morning walk... We are trying to establish the identity of the girl,” NDTV quoted police officer BK Jhala as saying.

The police officer added that even after eight days, the parents of the girl are yet to be identified. The police also believe that she was murdered somewhere else and the dead body has been thrown there.

“The victim’s picture has been sent to the state police control room for identification process,” the police officer told news agency ANI.

Amid widespread anger and protests across the country over the Kathua and Unnao rape and murder cases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Friday said such incidents could not be part of any civilised society and promised to make sure that the culprits do not get away.

“As a country, as a society we all are ashamed of it (rapes),” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said.

“I want to assure the country that no culprit will be spared, complete justice will be done. Our daughters will definitely get justice,” PM Modi added.

It was after the chilling details of the Kathua rape and murder back in January emerged over the past week that the brutality of the crime hit the country.

The eight-year-old girl, was kidnapped by a group to allegedly drive out her Muslim Bakerwal community, was kept sedated and gangraped repeatedly for days before her head was bashed with a heavy stone.

In the Unnao case, the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government has been blamed for trying to shield the influential party MLA Kuldeep Singh Sengar who was accused of raping a 17 year-old girl in June last year. The girl's father was beaten by the MLA’s brother and sent to jail. He died on Monday, while in police custody.

(With inputs from ANI)