'Nayagarh rape-murder accused had sexually assaulted minor even after she was dead'

BHUBANESWAR: SIT, which is probing the alleged rape and murder of a 5-year-old girl in Nayagarh, said the accused Saroj Sethy (18), who was arrested on Sunday, had sexually assaulted the minor even after she died.
SIT chief Arun Bothra said Sethy was addicted to child pornography and often watched child pornographic movies in his sister’s mobile phone. "Saroj Sethy has confessed before us that he had watched child pornographic movies throughout the night of July 13, a day before he sexually assaulted and killed the minor girl, who was his neighbour," Bothra told media persons.
The minor along with other children of the village had been frequently visiting Sethy’s home to pluck berries from a tree in his home. When Sethy’s family members were not present at home on July 14, the child had come alone for the berry.
“On the pretext of giving her berry, Sethy took her inside the home and sexually assaulted her. When she resisted, he strangled her to death. He then committed the most weird and unfortunate offence of trying to have sex with the body,” Bothra said.
The accused bundled the child’s body into a jute sack and dumped it inside a bush near an unused village pond, which is located very close to his home. SIT said as of now they have not come across any witness, who saw Sethy taking the sack and dumping near the pond. Local police had recovered the body on July 23.
“We found a portion of a coconut tree's inflorescence near the body and strongly suspect he brought it from a coconut tree from his home. We will take the help of the Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology in Hyderabad and National Institute of Plant Genome Research in Delhi to ascertain whether the seized coconut trees portion belonged to the tree of his home,” Bothra said.
The SIT has also written to Google to gather more scientific evidence. “We found he had erased the search and browse history from the phone. Surprisingly, only one content he had forgotten to delete. That was how to delete search history. We also found a pop-up notification of a news item in the mobile - cousin arrested for minor’s rape and murder,” Bothra said.
The SIT head said Sethy’s suspicious activities and initial non-cooperation in the investigation prompted them to point the needle of suspicion towards him. “We had examined a large number of villagers and checked their mobile phone locations as of July 14. Sethy was the only person, who was alone at home that day in the village. He was reluctant to share the password of his sister’s phone, which he had been using. He was also reluctant to undergo a polygraph test. Later he agreed for the lie detector test, but his replies were deceptive,” Bothra said.
Notably, Sethy was earlier questioned by Nayagarh Sadar police, which had initially probed the case in July. But the local police had failed to get any clue of rape and murder, let alone identify the accused. The police station’s inspector-in-charge Rinarani Sahu was recently suspended and local sub-divisional police officer Niranjan Padhi transferred for poor investigation.