In a ghastly incident, a 30-year-old man slit the throat of a four-year-old girl when she resisted his attempts to rape her in his flat in a village in Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli (DNH), (between the states of Gujarat to the north and Maharashtra to the south). The accused has been arrested.
Unable to bear the horror of the tragedy, the victim’s father killed himself by consuming a disinfectant the next day, on Saturday, the police said.
DNH superintendent of police Hareshwar Swami said, “The incident occurred on Friday afternoon after the accused Santosh Rajat lured the victim who was playing outside her home in Naroli village.”
He said Rajat took the girl to his apartment and tried to rape her, but when she started crying, he slit her throat with a sharp weapon, stuffed her body in a sack, and threw it in the narrow shaft attached to the toilet of the flat by breaking the window.
After family members of the victim lodged a missing person’s complaint with Naroli police station, the police launched a search and scanned around 40 flats in the residential building where the girl lived, he said.
“During the search operation, the police found bloodstains in the bathroom of Rajat’s apartment. A sack with the body was found in the shaft attached to the toilet,” Hareshwar Swami said.
During interrogation, Rajat “Confessed” to luring the girl to his flat and trying to sexually assault her, the SP said.
Unable to bear the loss, the girl’s father consumed a disinfectant after seeing his daughter’s body, the SP said, adding that he was rushed to a hospital where he died on Saturday morning.
The accused, who hails from Dhanbad in Jharkhand, was living in Dadra and Nagar Haveli for the last four years, working in different factories, he said.
A case was registered against the accused under sections 364 (abduction), 376 (rape), 377 (unnatural offenses), and 302 (murder) of the IPC apart from provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, he said.
Rape is the fourth most common crime against women in India. According to the 2019 annual report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 32033 rape cases were registered across the country, or an average of 88 cases daily, slightly lower than in 2018 when 91 cases were registered daily.
There is an average of 87 registered rape cases daily. Multitudes are unregistered due to the stigma of shame that women suffer on revealing they are rape victims.