6-year-old girl gang-raped, killed by minor brothers in Lakhimpur Kheri

BAREILLY: A six-year-old girl was allegedly gang-raped and murdered by two minor brothers in a village of Phoolbehad Block of Lakhimpur Kheri district. The victim was a student of Class I, and had gone missing on Tuesday afternoon, when she was last seen playing near the house of the accused.
Initially, the girl’s family tried to search for the girl in the village, but when they failed, they approached police, who launched a massive manhunt.Kheri SSP Poonam ensured the search operation was carried on throughout the night. The body of the girl was finally recovered at around 3am on Wednesday, after the mother of the accused confessed to police that she had helped her sons dump the body, after she found they had strangled the girl to death.
The accused, aged 15 and 12 years, are Dalits and school dropouts, who currently work as ragpickers. Their parents are labourers. Police have taken the brothers and their mother into custody and have registered an FIR against all three, under sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of IPC. After rape was confirmed in autopsy later in the evening, the accused wee also booked under Pocso. The accused have confessed to having sexually assaulted the minor girl. The autopsy was conducted at Lakhimpur city by a panel of three doctors, though the official report is awaited.
SHO of Phoolbehad police station, Shyam Narayan Singh, told TOI, “From the beginning, the victim’s family had expressed suspicion their daughter had been abducted by the ragpickers living in the same locality, because she was last seen playing on a swing outside the house of the accused. During investigation, we took the statement of almost everyone living in the neighbourhood, when we found all three of the accused giving contradictory statements. Thereafter, we kept an eye on them and recovered the body some 200m from their home. The accused told us they had lured the girl into their house with a candy. We’re collecting more evidence against the accused, while waiting for the autopsy report.”
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)
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