Maha: Two held for killing 9-year-old girl

Two people have been arrested for allegedly strangling a nine-year-old girl to death and dumping her body in Kasara Ghat in Maharashtra, police said on Thursday.

While Anita Rathod (30) and her nephew Akash Chavan (22) were arrested earlier this week, the police are still on the look out for her husband Prakash Rathod (32), the main accused in the case, district superintendent of police Thane Rural Dr Shivaji Rathod.

A resident of Uttan in Thane district, Prakash had brought the victim from Kannad of Aurangabad, promising her mother that the girl would be enrolled in a school and looked after, the officer said.

When the victim's mother had not heard from her in a while, she reported her missing on December 4 at Uttan Sagri police station, he said.

The police registered an offence under section 363 (kidnapping) of the Indian Penal Code and began the probe, he added.

On interrogating the Rathod couple, the police failed to get any satisfactory reply from them about the victim's whereabouts, the official said.

Further investigation revealed that the child had not been enrolled at any school and was instead forced to do household chores, he added.

The Rathod couple would beat her up frequently, he said, adding that the girl would also wet her bed at night.

On November 7, when the girl urinated on herself, Prakash assaulted her severely and throttled her to death, he said.

The duo then placed the body in bag, put it in a water drum and poured cement inside it to dispel the smell of decay, the official said.

The couple enlisted their nephew's help to transport the drum to Kasara and threw it in the ghats on November 12, he added.

The police retrieved the drum and sent the body for a post-mortem, Bhayander SDPO Dr Sashikant Bhosale said, adding that a case has been registered under section 302 (murder) and other relevant provisions of the Indian Penal Code against the accused, one of whom is absconding.