Palghar: 8-yr-old girl attending friend's birthday party raped, murdered; ex-sarpanch's son held

In yet another gruesome child rape case in Maharashtra, an eight-year-old girl, who had gone to attend a friend's birthday party, was allegedly raped and murdered by a 21-year-old in Palghar district.

The police said on Wednesday that a 21-year-old son of a former sarpanch (village head) was arrested in this connection.

The victim was a resident of a village in Mokhada taluka. Her mother had been a former councillor.

Earlier in August, two four-year-old girls studying in kindergarten at a Thane school in Maharashtra were allegedly sexually assaulted by a 23-year-old male cleaning staff inside the girls' toilet at their school. The incident had created a stir in the community.

Also read: Thane: Two 4-year-olds sexually assaulted in school; locals stage 'rail roko' protest 

The crime

The eight-year-old had gone to attend her friend's birthday party in the village on Sunday but failed to return home.

Her family members then carried out a search for her.

The victim's body was found near a graveyard in the village late Sunday night. The police sent the body for postmortem and initiated a probe into the girl's death, Mokhada police station's assistant inspector Premnath Dhole told the meida.

A police probe team worked on various leads, including technical and intelligence inputs, and arrested the man on Tuesday, he said.

Also read: Child rape cases surged 96% from 2016 to 2022 due to increased reporting: CRY analysis 

The man allegedly stalked the girl on Sunday and then raped and murdered her at night, he said.

The accused has been booked under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections 103(1) (murder), 65 (2) (rape of a female under 12 years of age) and 66 (punishment for causing death or resulting in a persistent vegetative state of the victim) and provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, Dhole said.

(With inputs from agencies)