Less than 12 hours after she went missing from her house, the body of a seven-year-old girl was found inside a park in outer Delhi’s Nihal Vihar Sunday morning, police said. While her limbs were tied together and two ropes were found dangling from her neck when her relatives found her, police suspect she died of an injury to her head caused by some “blunt object”.

Seju P Kuruvilla, deputy commissioner of police (outer Delhi), said even though the girl’s clothes were found to be intact, the police are waiting for the autopsy report to ascertain whether she was sexually assaulted. Maintaining that a murder case under IPC section 302 has been registered at Nihal Vihar, the officer maintained that the probe was still its preliminary stage and there was no clue about either the killer or the motive behind the murder.

This is the fourth incident in the last 20 days wherein bodies of girls or women have been found in the national Capital. On January 27, a six-year-old girl’s body was found stuffed in a sack and dumped near her home in Samaypur Badli. On January 19, the body of an unidentified minor girl, with her throat slit, was found in a sack in central Delhi’s Daryaganj. Two days later, dismembered body parts of an unidentified woman was found in an agricultural field in outer Delhi’s Alipur. So far, all four crimes have remained unsolved.

Elaborating further on Sunday’s crime, police said the girl who was murdered used to live with her parents and younger sister in Nihal Vihar and her father works at a factory. “The two girls were born to the family after lots of prayers. The younger one was born deaf and mute. The girl who was killed was a support to her parents,” the girl’s aunt said.

Reminiscing about the fateful 24 hours, the girl’s mother said that her two daughters left for the local market around 8pm on Saturday. “My younger daughter who is five years old wanted momos and was crying a lot. So I asked my elder one to accompany her,” said the girl’s mother.

But suddenly, the elder girl went missing from the momo stall so the younger one returned home crying, the mother said, adding, “We immediately began searching for her but in vain. Around 10pm, we approached the local police.”

Alleging that the police were not responsive, the girl’s aunt said, “Had the police searched for her actively, she would not have been killed.”

But the DCP said a kidnapping case was registered at Nihal Vihar police station on Saturday night. “We searched all night but couldn’t trace her,” he said.

On Sunday morning, the girl’s family again set out to look for her. “We visited the Nihal Vihar park. We found her body around 6.30am at a garbage-littered spot in the park,” said the girl’s aunt.

“Her hands and legs were folded and tied together,” said the aunt.

First Published: Feb 11, 2019 08:30 IST