Minor raped before murder in Odisha's Nayagarh, second such incident in district in a year

BHUBANESWAR: A day after arresting a 22-year-old youth on charges of killing a 6-year-old girl at a village in Nayagarh district, the police on Thursday said she was raped before her murder. The accused Sagar Dalai was produced in Nayagarh court on Thursday and sent to judicial custody following rejection of his bail plea.
The incident came nearly a year after the sensational rape and murder of 5-year-old girl in Nayagarh district in July last year.The offence had triggered massive public outrage over the shoddy investigation by local police. While the government had then ordered an SIT probe, the former Nayagarh SP Pratyush Diwakar was transferred amid the statewide furore.
In the latest case, the minor girl had gone missing on June 12. Her parents lodged a complaint with the Banigochha police the same day. The police found her body near the village on Wednesday (June 16).
“Based on the preliminary investigation and questioning of the villagers, we zeroed in on a youth, who belonged to the victim’s village. The village has only 10 houses. During interrogation he confessed to raping and killing the child. The motive of the murder was sexual assault,” Nayagarh SP, Siddharth Kataria said.
Police said Dalai, who used to work in a brick kiln in Tamil Nadu before returning to the village in the recent past, had abducted the child on the pretext of giving her chocolate. He allegedly raped her and strangulated her to death.
The police pointed the needle of suspicion on Dalai as he was often seen by some villagers playing with children and showing them movies on his mobile phone. He and his brother are the only two persons, who had smartphones in the village.
“We suspected his activities as he had misled the villagers by saying that the girl went to a nearby temple and would return on her own. He also had advised the child’s parents to conduct a puja,” another police officer said.
(The victim's identity has not been revealed to protect her privacy as per Supreme Court directives on cases related to sexual assault)