A 45-year-old man from Maharashtra’s Palghar district has been arrested on the charge of kidnapping, rape and murder of a 10-year-old girl, an official said.
The girl from Talasari taluka went to school around 9 am on Wednesday but did not return home, prompting her family to approach the police, said Sachin Navadkar, the public relations officer of the Palghar rural police.
Four police teams pieced together many leads and intelligence inputs to zero in on a neighbour of the girl. He was then taken into custody on suspicion, the official said.
During interrogation, the man said he took the girl to Sanjan in Gujarat, less than 20 km from Talasari, where he raped and killed her before dumping the body in a forest, the official said.