Ghaziabad: The father of a four-year-old girl allegedly raped and murdered in March has moved Supreme Court, saying he has lost faith in the police probe because the cops did not pursue the rape angle despite autopsy findings pointing to sexual assault. His plea, mentioned before the top court on Tuesday, will now be heard on April 10.“A man raped and killed my daughter, but police registered the case only as murder. When they did not listen to me, my trust in getting justice through them broke. I had no option but to approach Supreme Court,” he told TOI.The child was found murdered on March 16. According to her father, she was playing outside their house around 6pm when a neighbour allegedly took her away on the pretext of buying her chocolate. The girl lived with her father, a daily wager, and her two brothers, aged 12 and 10.When he returned from work around 7pm, his daughter was missing. He said local children told him that their neighbour had taken her along. He went to the man’s house and searched nearby shops, but could not find either him or the child. Relatives and neighbours then joined the search.Around 8.45pm, they found the accused in an isolated farm in the village. “When I asked where my daughter was, he told me to go ahead and I would find her,” the father had said earlier. A short distance away, the family found the child bleeding from the head. Her body was found in bushes around 500 metres from home.According to police, the accused lured the girl away, sexually assaulted her and killed her by repeatedly hitting her head with a brick. A senior officer said he had first taken her to a local market, where they ate samosa and jalebi, bought lollipops and then went towards an isolated spot.The father said he was upset that police chose to skip the rape angle even after the autopsy report. “The report clearly recorded it. Yet, police did not investigate the case on that basis,” he added.Nandgram ACP Ziauddin Ahmad said police have now filed a 900-page chargesheet in the district court under BNS sections 103 (murder), 238 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offenders), 66 (punishment for causing death or resulting in persistent vegetative state of victim), Section 5/6 of Pocso Act and relevant provisions of the SC/ST Act.He said the FIR was first lodged for murder on the father’s complaint, but after the autopsy found 11 injuries — including three blows to the head, strangulation and bite marks and genital injuries — Pocso and SC/ST provisions were added.The accused was later arrested near his house. During questioning, he allegedly told interrogators that he had hidden a blood-stained handkerchief in the bushes where the girl’s body was found. Officers claimed that when he was taken to the crime scene for recovery, he fired at them and was shot in both legs in retaliatory firing. An illegal weapon and cartridges were recovered, police said.In the Supreme Court on Tuesday, senior advocate N Hariharan, appearing for the father, said the matter required urgent consideration because “though the postmortem shows aggravated sexual assault, there is no investigation directed towards rape”. He told the bench he was seeking transfer of the investigation. Chief Justice Surya Kant said the court would hear the matter and then decide what order was needed.
