Body of man suspected of kidnapping Haryana teen who was raped brutally was found in a canal today

Haryana Police said today that the body of a 19-year-old youth, who was named in the First Information Report or FIR as the alleged kidnapper in the savage rape and murder case of a 15-year-old Dalit girl from a village in Kurukshetra district, has been found in a canal near Jyotisar. The body was found late last night from the Bhakhra Canal, police said.The police said that the body of the Class XII student was found in a decomposed condition and was identified by his parents from a tattoo on his arm. The Police had earlier launched a hunt to arrest the accused who is alleged to have kidnapped the girl from Kurukshetra when she went to attend a tuition class.The youth had been named as the alleged abductor in a complaint lodged by the girl's family after the teenager had gone missing last week from her village in Kurukshetra after leaving home to attend a tuition class."On the complaint of the girl's parents, we were treating the youth as a suspect for kidnapping. His body was found yesterday night from a canal near Jyotisar. Though there were no visible injury marks, the postmortem will reveal the exact cause of his death," Kurukshetra's Superintendent of Police, Abhishek Garg told news agency PTI over the phone.The Class X student's half-naked body was found on Saturday from near the bank of a canal in a village in Jind district after she had gone missing last Tuesday.Asked about the allegations levelled by the girl's family against the local police for not acting swiftly when the complaint was lodged, Mr Garg said the Station House Officer or SHO concerned has been suspended.The girl was brutally assaulted, her private parts mutilated and some of the vital organs ruptured, police had said earlier. The incident triggered nationwide outrage, with the opposition Congress slamming the Manohar Khattar government over its alleged failure to ensure safety and security of women.Police had earlier said they believe the number of accused in the crime could be more than one. However, with the body of the youth being found, many questions arise about how the girl reached nearly 100 km away from her home in Jind district where her body was found. "It is an ongoing investigation. We have also detained a few persons. Our teams are investigating the case from all angles," the policeman said.The shocking incident came close on the heels of another incident last month, in which a six-year-old girl was brutally raped and killed in Haryana's Uklana area in Hisar district.

Besides this, another 11-year-old girl was raped and killed in a separate incident in Panipat last week while a 23-year-old woman was allegedly kidnapped and then gang-raped in a moving car in Faridabad.In the wake of recent incidents of rape and murders being reported from different parts of Haryana, DGP BS Sandhu yesterday held a meeting with senior officers of the police department and asked field units to accord priority to cases.