Nashik: The Nashik police has arrested a 26-year-old labourer who allegedly raped his five-year-old daughter on Saturday night after returning from a wedding in a drunken state. The police also arrested the labourer’s mother, who allegedly strangled the girl after she had been rendered unconscious by the sexual attack in a bid to cover up her son’s crime.
According to the police, the grandmother had dumped the girl’s corpse behind a school, “found” the body during a stage-managed “search” with the help of a nephew and finally got a fake case registered with the police hours after alleging that the child had been abducted, raped and killed by unknown persons.
The police, however, doubted the grandmother’s version, as local residents had suspected foul play by the woman and her son, who was known to be a local drunkard. A sniffer dog, which was called in at the spot by the police during the subsequent probe, ran back to the girl’s house from the spot where her body had been allegedly dumped by the grandmother.
During their interrogation, the labourer, his mother and her nephew eventually spilled the beans on how the girl was raped, killed and disposed of, according to police sources. According to the police, the labourer had picked up the victim at a time she was sleeping with the grandmother and took her to a separate room to rape her.
The grandmother, after getting rid of the body, went to the police station and stated that her granddaughter was picked up from her house, raped and strangled behind the ZP primary school.
The police recorded her complaint and registered cases against unidentified assailants under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act. A dog squad was summoned which showed the way back to the house. The police then separately questioned the father, grandmother and an uncle, and found discrepancies in their versions and then strongly interrogated the trio after which the father allegedly confessed to the crime.
Speaking to this newspaper, sub-divisional police officer (Kalwan range) Devidas Patil said that the labourer was drunk when he had raped the child and has confessed to the crime. The medical report has confirmed rape, he said.
Sources said that the alleged rapist’s wife was staying with her parents due to a dispute. The daughter was staying with her father and grandmother in their house.
Earlier, on April 24, a man had allegedly raped his sever-year-old granddaughter and strangled her with an aluminium wire in Nashik. The police arrested the accused, while angry villagers held a rasta roko at Nashik Phata on Vani-Nashik road.
