The Surat Police last week found the body of an 11-year-old girl with 86 injuries at a cricket ground in the Bhestan area. An autopsy report suggests that the child, who the police have not identified yet, was raped and tortured over eight days before she was strangled to death, ANI reported on Saturday.
The case comes even as people across India protested after the police’s chargesheet on the rape of an eight-year-old child in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua revealed similar torture – she was drugged, gangraped, starved and murdered in January.
“We found wounds on her body, which was between one to seven days old,” said the forensics head of the Surat Civil Hospital, Ganesh Govekar, according to ANI. “She had 86 external injuries on her body.”
Officer KB Jhala said people on their morning walk had found the body was found around 6 am near a road next to a cricket ground. Surat Police Commissioner Satish Sharma said the Crime Branch has taken over the investigation, ANI reported.
“It seems a stick like object had been inserted in her private parts,” The Times of India quoted a police officer as saying. “The girl was subjected to severe torture before being killed.”
According to the report, there were multiple injuries from being beaten with a stick or a blunt object.
The police have announced a Rs 20,000 reward for information to help identify the girl. Besides circulating the message and a photograph of the child on social media, they have also put up 1,200 posters.
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