9-year-old girl raped, strangled to death in Karnataka's Kalaburagi district

Bengaluru, Dec 3: A nine-year-old girl was allegedly raped and strangled to death at a village in Kalaburagi district, police said on Tuesday. A resident of Sulepet in Chicholi Taluk, she had gone missing on Monday evening after she went out to play with her friends. Her blood-stained naked body was found in the field near a pond on the outskirts of the village on Monday night, police said.

A 34-year-old tailor, identified as Yallappa Mahadevappa Sedam, with whom the girl was allegedly last seen, has been arrested, police said. "The man had lured the girl to eat a packaged snack and then took her to the field where he allegedly perpetrated the crime," a senior police official at Sulepet police station told PTI.

Following the incident, protests erupted in Sulepet on Tuesday, where hundreds of people hit the road, holding aloft placards and raising slogans, demanding capital punishment to the alleged rapist. A large number of school girls also staged a sit-in demonstration on the road, blocking vehicular movement. While schools in the village were closed in view of the protests, police made elaborate security arrangements to prevent any untoward incident.

The Superintendent of Police Iada Martin Marbaniang has been camping in the village. The incidents comes even as there has been nationwide outrage over the rape and murder of a woman veterinarian in Hyderabad last month.