Body of missing girl recovered from pit in UP's Bulandshahr, accused nabbed in Shimla

LUCKNOW: In a shocking incident, a 14-year-old girl who went missing nearly five days ago was found buried in a pit in Siraura village under Anupshahr police station area in Bulandshahr district of western UP on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the district police arrested a man, named Harendra, 22, from Shimla on Wednesday morning. According to police sources, Harendra is the same man in whose house the body of the minor was buried.

Police sources claimed that Harender, who worked in Delhi, was in the village when the girl disappeared.

"During the interrogation, the accused admitted to his crime confessing that the minor with speech impairment had gone to his house seeking some water. That’s when he dragged her inside the house attempted to rape her. When she cried for help, he killed her and buried the body inside the house,” Bulandshahr SSP Santosh Kumar Singh said while talking to mediapersons.

According to the police, it was the evening of last Thursday when the minor, daughter of a manual labourer, got thirsty while working on the field with her mother and elder sister. She entered the dwelling of Harender surrounded by farmlands. When she did not return for two hours, her mother and sister went to the house where the minor had gone seeking water. They found Harender lying prostrate on a cot.

For the next three days, the family and the villagers kept on searching the girl, said the sources, adding that on Sunday, the kin of the victim again came to Harender’s house only to find it locked.

Then the clueless and hapless father of the victim approached the Anupshahr police station and a missing person complaint was lodged. Since then, efforts were on to locate the girl but no clues to her whereabouts could be found.

"The parents had filed a missing person's complaint on February 28. She was working in the fields with her mother and two sisters about 100 metres from the house where her body was recovered," Bulandshahr Police chief Santosh Kumar Singh said.

He said that on Tuesday afternoon, a police team accompanied by the victim’s father reached Harender’s house yet again and the cops scaled the wall to enter the house which was locked. While jumping inside the house, one of the policemen landed on loose mud in the courtyard. Subsequently, the cops dug the ground only to find the naked body of the minor inside a pit.

The body was sent for a post-mortem examination and sexual assault would be confirmed only when the autopsy report comes. According to the victim's father, the girl had speech impairment and used to stammer while talking. The Bulandshahr SSP said that two persons—the father-son duo—used to live in the house from where the body was recovered. The father of the accused was arrested earlier and Harender had been absconding. He was arrested from Shimla on Wednesday morning.

Bulandshahr district magistrate Ravindra Kumar, who also visited the site when the body was dug out, said, "It seems to be a case of murder. Since the victim was a minor and a man was seen at this house, sexual assault cannot be ruled out. The strictest possible action will be taken in the matter.”