A seven-year-old girl identified as Chanchal Singh was found murdered and possibly raped in the Malwani area of Malad a day after she went missing. An FIR has been lodged in the Malwani police station, and the police have rounded up a few people for questioning.
Meanwhile the grandfather of the girl, with whom she was staying, said he suspected two persons with whom he had prior enmity to be involved in the crime.
The post-mortem of the body was conducted at the Bhagwati hospital of Borivali and the cause of death was kept reserved; the post mortem examination has not ruled out rape.
Police officials are suspecting that the girl was raped first and then killed, and later the kidnapper dumped her body. However, officials refused to make any comment on the case and limited themselves to saying, “investigation is on.”
The (maternal) grandfather of the girl Tukaram Jadhav (55) while talking to The Asian Age said that Chanchal’s father Ranjit Singh, a wall painter by profession, stayed in Sai Nagar area of Madh, with his wife, who was a guard a a call centre. The couple has another three-year-old girl, while Chanchal had been staying with Mr Jadhav and his wife since she was two months old.
Chanchal was studying in class 1 of Kendriya Vidhyalaya, INS Hamla, and was good in studies. On Monday, she was playing outside their house and around 4 pm she suddenly went missing. Mr Jadhav along with the locals looked for the girl for sometime and after failing to locate her registered a missing complaint at the police station.
According to Mr Jadhav, he was involved in a property dispute with two locals for a long time and twice they had tried to harm him. Mr Jadhav told the police that he suspected that Chanchal was kidnapped by two locals with whom he had a dispute. Later, around 2 am (Monday late night) when the locals were searching in the area they found the body of Chanchal near a creek in INS Hamla area. The police was informed following which the body was sent for autopsy.
A source from the hospital told this newspaper that the girl had bled heavily from her private parts and so chances of rape could not be ruled out. She also had head injuries and marks on her face and neck, which showed that she could have been strangulated, the source said.
A top police official on condition of anonymity told this newspaper that the police is questioning all the locals, but had not got any leads on the kidnapper.
Police officials said they believed that the girl was murdered by a local or a person known to her, who could have had ill intentions, and property dispute was not the motive for the murder.
