Andhra couple claims Surat rape victim is their daughter

Surat: A couple from Andhra Pradesh has claimed that the minor who was raped, tortured and murdered in Surat earlier this month is their daughter. The shocking incident was one of several that sparked national outrage and protests over the weekend.   

“The couple has come with Aadhaar card of the victim. Police have started the procedure for their DNA test to establish their claim,” reports quoted Surat commissioner of police Satish Sharma saying.

The couple is from Prakasam district of Andhra Pradesh and has claimed their daughter went missing on October 2017, said police.

The parents had filed a missing person report with the state police, but it was not suspected that she would be found so far from home.

The parents identified the girl from the photos tweeted by the Surat police on Monday after it was decided to reach out to the public appealing on Twitter when no one came forward to identify the child even after 10 days.

Initially, the girl was thought to belong to one of the many migrant families from Bengal or Odisha who come to work in Surat. The police widened their search zone after they drew a blank despite collaborating with their counterparts in the neighbouring states.

Having gone through around 8,000 complaints related to missing children from Gujarat and other states, Surat police had pasted posters in multiple languages across the city and on trains to Odisha and West Bengal.

The area where the body was recovered is an industrial belt and has a significant population of migrant workers.

The body of the girl, believed to be between nine and 11 years old, was found with as many as 86 injury marks on April 6, in a desolate spot near a cricket ground. Postmortem report indicated that she had been raped and violated with wooden objects. She was later strangled and smothered, the report said.  

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

The doctors said the injuries indicated that the child had been kept captive for days and tortured before being murdered. The police suspected that the body was taken to the desolate spot and dumped to avoid detection.