Wed, Mar 19 04:47 AM
A seven-year-old Dalit girl's brutally mutilated body was found in Kaushambi district on Tuesday, allegedly after she was raped and tortured for two days.
The body of the girl, found in the fields of the village pradhan of Koilaha, had one arm cut off. An eye had also been gouged out.
The police have detained for questioning two guards of a cellphone company, who were on duty at the company's network tower in the village. The girl went missing from near this tower, and the police have traced her footsteps inside the structure.
The men are Anand Kumar Singh and Suresh Kumar. Koilaha resident Phoolchand's wife and the seven-year-old had ventured into the nearby clearing to gather wood for fuel on Sunday afternoon.
The girl then wandered away from her mother, towards a nearby handpump to drink water. When she did not return, the mother searched for the girl, and soon called in Phoolchand and other villagers. After hours of fruitless search, the villagers informed the police on Monday.
On Tuesday morning, a villager spotted the girl's body in the fields, her clothes torn. Lacerations on her arms and neck indicated that she had been tied up. The police have not been able to recover the missing body parts.
Angry villagers blocked the Allahabad-Kanpur highway for hours causing a massive traffic jam. They also took out their ire on the police, and the cellphone tower, which was set afire. The tower's switchroom was ablaze when the police reached the spot.
Soon, the villagers started pelting the police personnel with stones. Five officers, including Station Officer A K Singh and Sub-inspector U S Pandey, were injured in the violence.
Even Kaushambi SP K S Emanual was not spared when he visited the village. He said preliminary investigation showed the incident took place at the cabin of the tower's switchroom, where the girl's footprints have been detected. The body has been sent for postmortem.
