CHENNAI: Four days after the police found skeletons of a 15-year-old girl at a sugarcane field nea Tiruttani about 100 km from Chennai, police arrested her 20-year-old uncle and have launched a hunt for four of his friends. Police suspect them to have sexually assaulted the girl which led to her death in September.

A senior police officer said the victim’s uncle also hailed from the same village near Tiruttani. On September 7, she left for school, but did not return home. Her parents searched for her and learnt that she did not attend classes.

Police investigations revealed that the girl’s uncle took her to a pump room in the sugarcane field where he sexually assaulted her. Later he called four friends, who too are believed to have raped her.
Police also suspected that the men had detained the girl for five days in the same pump room where they repeatedly sexually assaulted her, but sources said this was not yet ascertained.

“Learning that the girl had died, the men buried her body in the farmland initially, later fearing being caught, they dug the place up and again buried the body close to the canal in the sugarcane field,” said the police officer.

Meanwhile, the girl’s father lodged a missing complaint on September 7 and the family was looking out for her since then. Since there was no progress in the investigation, in December the family approached the Madras High Court too and filed a habeas corpus petition to trace their daughter. Around the same time, the girl’s uncle is also said to have suspiciously disappeared.

Only on February 10, a few labourers working in a sugarcane field situated about one-and-a-half-km away from the girl’s school found skeletons near a pond.

The police were alerted and they found a pair of anklets, earring studs and the ring along with the school uniform which happened to be of the same school the victim studied in. And the parents of the victim confirmed that the ornaments belonged to the girl. The police formed a special team to investigate the case. Police found the bones to be those of the girl, who went missing on September 7.

On Thursday, Pothatturpet police said their investigations found that it was the girl’s uncle and his four friends who had killed the girl after raping her. Police have now launched a hunt for the four other suspects.