Ghaziabad: A seven-year-old girl, whose brothers, also children, saw two men offering her chips and a cold drink before taking her away with them, was allegedly gang-raped, murdered and thrown into the sub-basement of a mall under construction in Raj Nagar Extension, where her parents work as labourers.Her body was recovered nearly five hours after she went missing. Police have detained at least two suspects, one of them a juvenile, identified through CCTV footage recovered from the site. The accused, police said, allegedly sexually assaulted the child on the third floor and threw her body down a shaft three levels below. The girl’s head and face had gashes, and it appeared her hands and legs were broken when the body was found around 1 am.ACP Priyashree Pal said, “A team from Nandgram police station and forensic units inspected the scene to collect evidence. They analysed CCTV footage from the site to identify the culprits.” Cops said footage from 7.40 pm on Friday showed the two suspects walking away with the girl.The girl’s father told TOI he has been living in the locality for four years. “We usually get free around 5 pm from work. After that, I went out while my wife was preparing food. Around 7 pm on Friday, my daughter and her two brothers (aged 8 and 10) were playing outside. When the two boys came home around 8 pm, my wife started looking for our daughter,” he said.The child’s mother said the construction site has guards, and several labourers and their families live in shanties around the construction area, but no one had so far come up to identify the accused. “I don’t know the people who have been arrested for this. But I want whoever did this to my daughter to be hanged,” she said. A neighbour said the accused had arrived just four days earlier to work at the site.
