40-yr-old man arrested for rape, murder of daughter

Hyderabad, May 24: The 40-year-old father of a minor tribal girl, who had lodged a police complaint of his daughter being abducted and killed by unknown persons, was today arrested after he confessed of himself having raped and murdered her in neighbouring Ranga Reddy district.

The 15-year-old girl, a class IX student, was allegedly raped and later killed by her own father, Ranga Reddy Superintendent of Police M Srinivas said.

The girl's father had lodged a complaint with Bantawaram police, saying that when he was travelling with his daughter on a motorbike on the night of May 21 to their native Izra Chittempally village, they stopped near Barwad village to drink water.

At that time, some unidentified persons abducted his daughter in an auto-rickshaw while two others beat him unconscious. The girl's body was found next morning with head injuries and strangulation wounds.

Preliminary autopsy report revealed that she had been sexually assaulted. During the course of investigation, the special police teams picked up suspects and examined their complicity, but no clues were found to crack the case, the SP said.

"This raised suspicion about the character of the complainant and it was found that he was giving contradictory statements to police," Srinivas said.

On thorough interrogation, the man confessed that he had in a drunken state raped and murdered his daughter, the eldest of his four children, he said.

The probe revealed that the accused was a habitual drinker and was earlier involved in couple of criminal cases. According to police, while the accused and his daughter were proceeding to their house, the man stopped the bike and had three bottles of toddy at a shop.

He then took his daughter to the outskirts of Barwad village and sexually assaulted her there, the SP said. "When she resisted, he throttled her to death and fled from the spot.

He further hatched a plan to divert the issue and concocted a story that five unknown offenders kidnapped his daughter by beating them with stones and killed her ," Srinivas said.

The accused has been booked under sections 376 (rape) and 302 (murder) of IPC and under relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act-2012, police added.

PTI