Bhubaneswar: A day after arresting the accused in the sensational murder of a five-year-old girl at Jadupur village in Nayagarh in July this year, SIT chief Arun Bothra on Tuesday said that the killer had raped the girl after strangulating her to death.
Addressing a press conference at the Commissionerate Police headquarters to reveal the findings on the events and circumstances leading to the brutal crime, Bothra said that it was borne out of uncontrolled passion triggered by excessive addiction to child pornography by the accused, identified as Saroj Sethi who lived in the neighbourhood of the victim girl.
“In fact, one of Sethi’s younger sisters happened to be a close friend of the victim who used to visit his home to eat Jamun from the tree in Sethi’s backyard,” Bothra said.
On the fateful day (July 14), the victim had visited Sethi’s house for the same purpose.
“Sethi watched porn videos on his mobile phone throughout the night of July 13. Next day he was all alone at home as his sister and mother were out on work. He had lost his father years ago,” Bothra said.
The girl came in the sight of Sethi just when he had an excessive bout of porn. “He quickly seized the opportunity and pounced on the girl. When she resisted, Sethi, in manic passion, strangled her using his bare hands. The girl died after a while. Finding the girl still, Saroj tried to have intercourse after disrobing her,” Bothra said adding that droplets of semen fell on the victim’s frock which was lying near her body. Those semen samples helped the police crack the murder mystery.
Terming it ‘weird’ and unfortunate, the senior IPS officer said, “Earlier I had heard of cases wherein accused tried to have intercourse with dead corpses. But this is for the first time in my career as a policeman I came face to face with such an instance of pervert sexual violence.”
Bothra said Sethi had moments of repentance when the realisation sank in. “It was too late by then and he panicked finding the girl dead. The next thing in his head was to quickly dispose of the body.”
“He took a jute bag and bundled the naked body into it with its head down. He kept the girl’s frock inside the bag and tied it with a piece of wire. He then carried the bag 25-30 meters away from his house and hid it in a bushy and swamp near a pond. He covered the bag with coconut tree branches,” said Bothra.
He later took the girl’s leggings and threw it in the same pond. “Efforts are on to retrieve the leggings by drying up the pond. We hope we will find it by evening,” he added.
When the girl’s parents and villagers began a search for the missing girl, Sethi did not raise any suspicion as no one had witnessed the girl’s last visit to his home on the fateful day, Bothra added.