Chennai: Missing girl gang-raped, murdered; five arrested

CHENNAI: Five months after a teenage girl went missing from her school, and three days after her skeletal remains were dug up near a canal in Tiruvallur district, graphic details of her horrific gangrape and murder have started to surface.
The girl failed to return from school on September 7, 2018, and her skeletal remains were dug up from a canal bank on February 10, 2019.
But, all along, the district police failed to take any serious action on the girl missing complaint lodged by the victim girl's parents. Though an FIR was registered the next day, police did little else. The parents had to initiate a round of habeas corpus case proceedings in Madras high court, to nudge police to intensify the search for the missing girl. It has now been altered into a gangrape-cum-murder case.
The girl, in love with a teenage relative, bunked her classes on September 7, 2018, and went with him to a farm nearby. What followed was a betrayal by the boy, who first raped her with consent, but later tied her up and brought his friends to ravage her.
She remained tied up in a small motor pumpset room of a remote agricultural farm for four days, during which a total of five people – including the two teenagers and three of their adult friends – took turns to ravage her.
The details emerged after the arrest of the prime suspect – the teenaged boyfriend of the victim-girl – by Tiruvallur district police.
The youth told police how they gagged her, tied her up and platered her mouth as she raised noise during custody. After a prolonged sexual assault, the culprits developed cold feet and apprehended that she would inform their families and police if let out alive. They then hit her head with an iron pipe, killing her instantly. The culprits buried the body on the banks of a canal a little distance away.
Last Sunday, workers in a sugarcane field near the canal noticed the skeletal remains, apparently after dogs dug up the spot.
Police have arrested five people in connection with the gangrape and murder and slapped offences under POCSO Act on them. All five will be remanded in custody during Friday.