Man rapes and murders 4-year-old to settle scores with her kin over UP panchayat poll rivalry

In a tragic incident in Kasganj district, a four-year-old girl was kidnapped, raped, and murdered, allegedly as an act of revenge linked to a past panchayat election conflict

AGRA: To settle scores with a family over a 2021 panchayat poll rivalry, a 45-year-old man allegedly kidnapped, raped and murdered a four-year-old girl who had gone missing from a village in Kasganj district on June 6. A co-accused who helped him commit the crime was arrested on Sunday, police said.“The main accused is on the run. He wanted to teach the family a lesson and hence conspired with the co-accused to commit the heinous crime. During questioning, the co-accused confessed. Both belong to the victim’s village. Teams are trying to nab the absconding man soon,” Kasganj SP OP Singh told TOI.Based on her father’s missing person complaint, an FIR was registered on June 6. The child’s body was found on a secluded stretch of the village three days later. Following the post-mortem report, BNS sections 103(1) (murder), 238 (causing disappearance of evidence), 65(2) (rape on a woman under 12 years of age), 66 (causing death or resulting in a persistent vegetative state of the victim), and 61(2) (criminal conspiracy), along with sections of the Pocso Act, were added to the FIR.In his complaint, the father, who works at a household goods-manufacturing firm in Haryana’s Faridabad, stated, “My daughter came to our village in Kasganj district from Faridabad with her mother, myself and three of our other children to meet her ailing grandfather. She had just stepped outside the house when she was kidnapped on June 6. They later mercilessly killed her.”Police found that the main accused had been harbouring animosity toward the child’s family following an electoral rivalry since the 2021 gram pradhan polls.