Nayagarh: Four days after her mysterious disappearance, the body of a six-year-old girl with her head severed was found on Wednesday.
A 21-year-old youth has been arrested for allegedly killing the minor, who belonged to Dhundugadia village under Banigochha police limits in Odisha’s Nayagarh district.
The accused, identified as Sagar Dalei, led the police to a spot inside the forest, where the body was recovered in presence of an Executive Magistrate.
According to police sources, the girl went missing from outside her house on June 12. After frantically searching for her but in vain, her parents lodged a missing complaint a day later, following which two police teams, led by an officer who had worked with the Special Operation Group(SOG) and a sub-inspector well versed with the geographical region, was formed to trace the girl.
All the possible angles were investigated, including the probability of the girl being attacked by wild animals since it was a forested region. The water bodies were also searched.
“We zeroed in on the accused since many children in the village used to visit him to watch videos on his smartphone,” Nayagarh SP Siddharth Kataria told the media.
Dalei was working as a labourer in Tamil Nadu and had returned home after the lockdown was imposed, he added.
He tried to mislead the villagers and create a sense of fear among them by telling them that their presiding deity might have taken her and she would return on her own in seven days, the sources added.
This incident brought back shocking memories of the sexual assault and murder of a minor girl in Nayagarh’s Jadupur village, which had rocked the state a year ago.
