Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

Nine-year-old girl found murdered

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE MAY 18. A nine-year-old girl, who had gone missing since the early hours of Thursday, was found murdered in Peenya police station limits on Friday night. The culprits had raped the girl before throttling her. They had also smashed her head with a boulder.

The Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), B.G. Jyothi Prakash Mirji, told presspersons that the body of Hemavathi, who had passed her third standard from M.G. English School in Chokkasandra, was found near a poultry farm at Doddabidarakallu, some two km. from her house.

Hemavathi was the daughter of Pandurangappa, a lathe machine worker and a resident of Vinayakanagar. According to Mr. Mirji, Pandurangappa's family on Wednesday night had gone to the Honnyalamma fair, near their house, which went on till the next morning.

Around 12.15 a.m., while Hemavathi's parents returned home, the girl, her cousin, aunt, and grandmother stayed back to watch the "Keelu-kudhure" performance by a troupe from Tamil Nadu.

Around 1.15 a.m., Hemavathi told her grandmother that she would go home, drink water and return. But when the girl did not return, her grandmother assumed that she had stayed back at the house.

When the old woman came home at 4 a.m., she found that Hemavathi had not returned. Pandurangappa and his relatives searched for Hemavathi in neighbouring villages on Thursday, but in vain.

On Friday, Pandurangappa lodged a complaint with the Peenya police stating that his daughter was missing. Around 9 p.m., a person working in a poultry farm at Doddabidarukallu informed police that a bare body of a girl was lying in a eucalyptus grove, near the farm.

Police identified the body and sent it for autopsy. Peenya police have registered a case.

Mr. Mirji did not rule out the possibility of the notorious psychopath and rapist, Umesh Reddy, who was arrested on Friday, having raped and murdered the girl.

While Hemavathi was killed in Peenya in the early hours of Thursday, Reddy was apprehended in neighbouring Yeshwanthapur on Friday morning.

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