Bhopal, Jan 3 In a shocking incident, a six-year-old tribal girl was allegedly raped and then brutally murdered in Madhya Pradesh's Seoni district, the police said on Friday, adding the accused has been apprehended.
Police recovered the minor girl's body from near a canal in Nayapura village surrounded by a dense forest area in Seoni around 4.30 p.m. on Friday.
The girl had been missing from home since morning. She was abducted from her house while she was sleeping.
The police, after tracing and recovering the minor girl's body, went to a community health centre where the post-mortem was conducted.
The post-mortem confirmed that the toddler was first raped and then smothered to death.
Accused Ajay Dhurve, a resident of Kharda, has been arrested. He used to work on the farm in the village of Nayapura, police said.
"During the questioning, he confessed to his crime and admitted that he abducted the girl while she was sleeping, raped her in the forest, and killed her. Later, he dumped the body near the canal," Nayapura police station in-charge Anup Uike said.
Enraged over the brutality to which the minor girl was subjected, family members of the victim and others from her village staged a protest.
They placed the girl's body at Gandhi Chowk on a road (Seoni-Malwa) and demanded a death penalty for the accused.
After receiving the information, the police reached the spot and tried to bring the situation under control.
The police have already registered a case against the accused under the relevant sections of BNS.
Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) Saroj Singh Parihar talked to the angry protesters and assured them of harsh punishment for the accused.
They agreed to end their protest after receiving a written assurance from the local area police that the chargesheet in the case would be filed within two weeks.
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