The Madhya Pradesh Police on Friday arrested a second person in connection with the abduction and alleged rape of an eight-year-old girl in the state’s Mandsaur city, PTI reported. Additional Superintendent of Police SS Kanesh said 24-year-old Asif, a construction worker, was the main accused’s accomplice.
Kanesh said Asif was arrested in Madarpura and that he had confessed to raping the child.
On Wednesday, the state police arrested 20-year-old Irfan alias Bhaiyyu Mev for allegedly abducting, sexually assaulting and attempting to kill the child. Mev was tracked using footage retrieved from a CCTV camera located between the girl’s school and the spot where she was found among bushes in Lakshman Gate locality on Wednesday afternoon. The child had gone missing from her school in Hafiz Colony on Tuesday.
Protestors gathered on the streets in Mandsaur city on Wednesday, seeking capital punishment for the accused, reported The Times of India.
On Friday, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said rapists were a “burden on the earth” and did not deserve to live. “In cases of rape, we have made a provision for trial in the fast-track courts,” the chief minister told reporters at his residence in Bhopal. “We will request the High Court and the Supreme Court to make a similar provision so that culprits in such crimes get capital punishment at the earliest.”
Meanwhile, a video purportedly showing Bharatiya Janata Party’s state vice president Sudarshan Gupta asking the child’s parents to thank the party’s Mandsaur legislator Sudhir Gupta for visiting them has surfaced, according to NDTV. Gupta is purportedly heard saying, “Manniye saansad ji aaye hain aap se milne, dhanyawaad boliye [The legislator has come to meet you, say thank you].”
The parents are shown complying with Gupta’s suggestion.
The Congress has demanded that the ruling party apologise to the child’s parents. “The BJP should apologise by touching the couple’s feet for failing to protect their daughter,” the news channel quoted Congress leader Mayank Aggarwal as saying.
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