Bhubaneswar: Two days after the arrest of a youth in connection with the murder of a minor girl at Jadupur village in Nayagarh district, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Crime Branch revealed his modus operandi on Tuesday.
Talking to the media, SIT chief Arun Bothra said the arrested youth, Saroj Sethi, is the prime accused.
How The Crime Took Place
Bothra said the minor girl, whose house is about 200 metres from that of Saroj, used to go to his house with some children of the village to eat berries at the backyard. Also, the minor girl was very close to Saroj’s younger sister.
While Saroj’s father has died, his mother is an ASHA worker and the younger sister has a private job. His eldest sister is married.
“The minor girl had gone alone to the house of Saroj on July 14 to eat berries. On that day, there was nobody in the house except Saroj. Finding her alone, he took her to a room near the backyard. As he tried to undress her, the girl protested. At this, he strangulated her. After she died, he raped the dead body. Later, he put the body and the frock inside a sack. He then covered the sack with coconut leaves and hid it under a bush near a pond,” Bothra said.
He also said the accused had forgotten to take the leggings of the deceased girl and he might have thrown them in the pond. “As we suspect that the leggings are in the pond, we have decided to flush out the pond water to find whether they are there,” he pointed out.
The Accused Is A Necrophiliac
Referring to the rape of the dead body of the minor girl, the SIT chief said that the accused used to watch child pornography on the mobile phone of his sister. He had opened a folder in the mobile and downloaded porn visuals in it and locked it. A day before the incident, he had watched child pornography on his mobile for the whole night. “The accused has confessed that though he had no plan to rape and murder the girl, he committed the crime after watching the pornography the previous night and got into the act as soon as the minor girl came to his house the next day,” Bothra revealed.
Polygraph Test
Bothra said the accused was initially unwilling to undergo the polygraph test. But he finally agreed as the SIT told him that his unwillingness will justify his involvement in the case. The polygraph test report has confirmed his involvement in the murder
No eyewitness testimony
Admitting that there is no eyewitness testimony, Bothra said the SIT is trying to collect scientific evidence. “In this connection, we have talked to the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular & Molecular Biology (CCMB) and the Delhi-based National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR),” he informed.
