Hundreds of people on Sunday turned up for the funeral of a 5-year-old migrant girl who was allegedly raped and strangled in Aluva in the Ernakulam district of Kerala. The body was placed near a primary school for public homage and a burial. The minor girl from Bihar was abducted from her home near Aluva and later her body was discovered from a heap of marshy garbage at a deserted land near a market in Aluva.
The alleged accused, Asfak Alam, 28, who is also a migrant worker from Bihar, was arrested on Friday night after the girl went missing the very same day. However, Alam only confessed to the crime on Saturday which led to the recovery of the body.
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"We received the complaint at 7.10 PM and an FIR was registered before 8 PM on Friday. Our team checked the CCTV visuals and found that the child was with the labourer. We apprehended him at 9.30 PM itself. However, he was in an inebriated state and the child was not with him," Ernakulam Rural SP, Vivek Kumar told the media.
Kumar told PTI that based on the medical examination, the girl was raped and strangulated to death.
The child of a migrant couple from Bihar, the girl went missing from her house at the Garage junction near here on Friday evening. The girl's body was found dumped in a sack in a marshy area behind a local market. She was brutally assaulted, sexually abused and the accused used garbage and sacks to cover the body, police said.
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Based on the CCTV visuals, Alam was staying in a room on the first floor of the building where the child's family was residing.
Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan on Sunday termed the rape and strangulation to death of a girl near here as "unfortunate" and urged the government to take the most stringent action against the accused.
The Governor, speaking to reporters in Delhi, said it was an unfortunate incident not only because someone violated a law, but also for the reason that women enjoy a special status and are respected in Kerala. "It is most unfortunate. I feel so sad and so ashamed. The government may not be able to prevent everything, but the duty of the government is to take stringent possible action against those responsible so that they become an example and nobody in future dares to do such a thing again," Khan said.
Amidst the brickbats being hurled at it by the Congress and BJP, the Left government announced it was considering bringing a law to make registration of migrant workers mandatory.
