Kolkata: The body of a nine-year-old girl was recovered Thursday from the staircase of a residential building in the city’s Jorabagan area. The discovery of the minor’s body sparked protests by locals. They claimed that the ‘police did not take action when the family had reported that the girl was missing’. The girl was found lying in a pool of blood on the staircase that led to the terrace of the multi-storey building. She was ‘first sexually abused and then killed’, a senior police officer said.
Preliminary investigations suggest that the victim went missing Wednesday evening. She was sexually abused, thrashed, strangled before her throat was slit by a person or a group of persons,” the officer said.
A team of officers from Jorabagan police station, and Kolkata Police Joint Commissioner of Police (crime) Murlidhar Sharma rushed to the area. “It seems that the culprits were known to the minor victim… That is why they killed her after abuse,” the officer stated.
Sleuths of the Kolkata Police spotted a couple of teeth and a few hair strands on the staircase where the minor’s body was found. A blood-stained knife, suspected to be the murder weapon, was found from a drain,” the senior officer said.
“Going by the circumstantial evidence, we suspect that the culprit or the culprits knew the locality well. We are probing the matter. Sniffer dogs have been employed to help with the probe,””he informed.
Locals, alleging police inaction, took to the streets during the day, seeking justice for the girl. “The family had approached the police when the girl went missing Wednesday evening. But they did not cooperate. Had they searched the locality, the girl could have been saved. Their casual attitude is responsible for this,” one of the locals alleged.
The victim, a resident of Sovabazar under the same police station area, was visiting her maternal uncle’s residence. Sleuths are talking to local children, who were seen playing with her earlier Wednesday, the officer stated.