india

Updated: Aug 01, 2019 16:28 IST

The 26-year-old mother of the girl whose body was found on Tuesday fainted several times when police asked her to identify the headless body of the three-year-old who was kidnapped from Jharkhand’s Tatanagar railway station on July 25. The child’s body was found from bushes near a water treatment plant in Ramadhin Bagan area.

The woman had eloped with her paramour Md Sheikh alias Monu Mandal, resident of Naya Bazar under Rajmahal police station in Sahebgunj district, from her parental house in a village in Purulia district of West Bengal on Thursday.

The three-year-old girl was abducted by accused 37-year-old Rinku Sahu, a repeat offender, while she was sleeping with her mother and Sheikh at around 11.40 pm, police said. Sheikh has now been sent to jail on her complaint, accusing him of abducting her daughter in connivance with his unknown friends.

Government railway police deputy superintendent Noor Mustafa Ansari said Rinku Sahu had dumped the body on Friday after allegedly abducting her. “We arrested Sahu on Tuesday night following a tip-off after we shared CCTV footage of the abduction with the media and on social media. He led us to the place where he had dumped the body,” he said.

“The girl’s private parts have also been damaged, indicating rape. We are awaiting her post-mortem report to conclusively confirm that,” Ansari said.

“They (mother and Sheikh) were in relationship for the past three months. They eloped from the house to shift to another city and marry. Mother of the victim was advised by Sheikh not to bring the child but she didn’t pay heed to it and brought the girl along. Both had a dispute over this,” said Ansari.

Brother of the victim’s mother could not identify the man in the CCTV footage who allegedly kidnapped the child. He, however, said his sister was given divorce by her husband Sonu Qazi (carpenter) three years ago. “Since then, she has been living with us with her three-year-old daughter. She left the house on Thursday,” Qazi, who works here in Sakchi Tina Shed, said.

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