2 held for rape, murder of 5-year-old girl in Goa: Police

The Goa police have arrested two construction labourers, aged 22 and 24, for the gruesome rape and murder of a five-year-old girl on Thursday night.
The duo, identified as Murari Kumar Painter, 24, and Upnesh Kumar, 22, worked and stayed at the construction site where the girl stayed along with her family. Her father works as a security guard at the same site.
“We are interrogating all the labourers present at the construction site and gathered certain leads and evidence. We have zeroed down to two accused persons. Both are from Bihar. We have taken them into custody. They have confessed to having committed this gruesome crime of rape and murder,” said superintendent of police (SP) Sunita Sawant.
“During the course of investigation, we came to know that one of the accused had trespassed into the room of the victim and had tried to touch the mother of the victim inappropriately. She raised an alarm. Her husband was also there at that time. It was the mother of the victim who raised suspicion on them and when we interrogated them thoroughly, we found certain leads which has led to the arrest of these two Bihari persons,” she added.
The five-year-old girl was rushed to the Chicalim Cottage Hospital (government run) at Vasco da Gama at around 3am on the wee hours of Friday but was declared brought dead. A postmortem examination revealed that she was sexually assaulted and murdered by smothering.
Police registered a case of under sections 376 (rape) and 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), besides sections of the Goa Children’s Act and the POCSO Act and began a hunt for the accused.
There was a total of 20 labourers who were interrogated, including 11 from Jharkhand and five from Bihar, who were residing at the site.