An 8-year-old girl's body was found under mysterious circumstances in the middle of a sugar cane field in a village in Lakhimpur Kheri district, Uttar Pradesh, India on Sunday, June 20.
Villagers reportedly found the victim's body lying in a semi-naked state with her salwar pajamas wrapped around her neck in a sugarcane field located in Mohammadpur Tajpur village of Pasgaon block, hours after she went missing, NDTV reported.
A police team headed by the Station House Officer (SHO) Adarsh Kumar Singh was promptly summoned to the scene. Authorities retrieved the victim's body and sent it to a local public hospital for an autopsy.
An initial investigation by the police revealed that on late Sunday afternoon, June 20, the girl had accompanied her grandmother to the western side of the village to graze goats. The grandmother reportedly then asked the girl to go back home on her own as it was getting late.
The grandmother stayed back as the animals were still grazing in the field. However, when her elderly matriarch arrived back at the residence in the evening, she realized that the girl had not yet reached home.
The girl's family members and concerned neighbors immediately searched for her in the nearby fields, but she was nowhere to be found. The girl's semi-naked body was finally located by a few locals who had gone towards the western side of the field a few hours later, the New Indian Express reported.
Police suspect that the victim was allegedly strangled to death as she was found with her pajama wrapped around her neck. The girl’s family members raised concerns that the victim might have been raped.
A postmortem examination conducted by an eight-doctor panel determined that the cause of death was due to "asphyxiation due to antemortem strangulation." The physicians did not find any evidence of rape. However, because of the nature of the injuries on the victim's body, Vijay Dhull, Kheri's Police Chief, said that they are invoking rape charges and the Protection of Children Against Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act in the case, News18 reported.
The victim's father reportedly works as a migrant laborer and is currently contracted in another state. The deceased girl was the eldest of three siblings.
Meanwhile, a First Information Report (FIR) has been registered against an unknown person based on a complaint filed by the deceased girl’s grandfather.
Dhul said that five police teams have been formed to investigate the murder from all different angles and that they will arrest the accused soon. He assured the girl's family that the accused will be soon brought to light and that strict action will be taken against the culprits.
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