punjab

Updated: Dec 10, 2017 18:45 IST

A six-year-old girl was found murdered with grave sexual injuries in Hisar district, triggering outrage in the area.

The girl went missing shortly after the family went to sleep on Friday, and her body was found in the village the next morning, police officials said. Her parents agreed to cremate the body on Sunday after the police promised to catch the suspect, as yet unidentified, within 48 hours.

The brutality was such that child was found in a pool of blood, and the autopsy said that the stick had perforated her uterus and intestines, a stark reminder of the gangrape-murder in Delhi almost 5 years ago that was seen as a watershed moment for India’s approach to sexual crimes.

As pressure from the family and opposition political parties mounted, the administration announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh, a house and jobs for two family members of the family as well as a BPL card.

The family belongs to a Dalit community and lived in a tent on an abandoned plot off a secluded street in Uklana block. The parents work as labourers.

The police has formed a special investigation team (SIT) under DSP Jaipal Singh to probe the case. “Till now the incident is a blind rape and murder for us. There has been no clue and the area has very few CCTV cameras that are of almost no help. We are rounding up local criminals, drug addicts and history-sheeters to investigate more,” DSP Jaipal told HT.

The parents of the victim want capital punishment for the accused.

Angry opposition parties and locals thronged Uklana to meet the bereaved family and demonstrate against the government. “The Khattar government is sleeping while incidents of rape and murder take place every other day,” senior Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala said.

Former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, while demanding an immediate arrest of the accused, said such barbaric incidents showed that law and order machinery in the state under the BJP government had collapsed. Things have come to such a pass that children were neither safe in their schools nor at homes, Hooda said.