According to Jamshedpur Police, the men "confessed" to raping, strangling and beheading the child.
Highlights
- The girl was kidnapped from her mother's side at Tatanagar rail station
- Police found the girl's mutilated body in a plastic bag hidden in bushes
- The accused allegedly said they strangled her as she wouldn't stop crying
In security footage from Jharkhand's Jamshedpur, a man walks out of a railway station with a little girl in his arms. The three-year-old was never seen alive again.
On Tuesday, the police found her mutilated body in a plastic bag, hidden in bushes around four km from the railway station. The head was missing and has still not been found. The police have used even sniffer dogs, but rain has complicated the search.
The police say the girl was gang-raped by the man who kidnapped her from her mother's side at the Tatanagar railway station on Thursday, and his friend.
After she went missing, the girl's frantic mother went to the police and reportedly told them she suspected the involvement of her partner Monu Mondal, the man she had left her husband for and traveled with from Purulia in Bengal. Monu Mondal, who was with the family at the station, is the third man to be arrested in the case and is being investigated for child trafficking.
Footage from CCTV cameras helped the police track down the main suspects.
Rinku Sahu and Kailash, arrested two days later, have not been able to explain why the child's head is missing. They had led search teams to the spot where the child's body was found. The two men, both in their 30s, allegedly told the police that they gang-raped the child over one whole day and strangled her because she wouldn't stop crying.
Rinku Sahu, who has a long criminal record, had been released from prison just recently on bail; he was serving time for kidnapping a child and attempting to kill her in 2015.
"I just picked her up and took her by mistake. I fell and I got scared," Rinku Sahu told reporters.
Rinku Sahu's mother is a constable and neighbours claim she helped him get away lightly with previous crimes. A father of three, he had allegedly kidnapped and assaulted many children before. His accomplice Kailash's father is a jawan posted in Jammu and Kashmir.
The Jamshedpur incident has surfaced when the Unnao rape survivor's horrific experience is making headlines. The teen is on the ventilator after a car crash on Sunday that her family says was plotted by the man she has accused of raping her -- Kuldeep Sengar, a four-time lawmaker expelled today by the BJP.