New Delhi: Dressed in a pink t-shirt and a pair of green pajamas, the little girl seemed to be around two years old. Her lifeless body, with bloodstains on her face, was found in a drain in Delhi’s Outer District region in May. The police suspect that she was sexually assaulted before she was killed, but seven months on, there are no clues to either her identity or that of her assailant(s).
The investigation, sources said, has been in a limbo since no missing complaint was lodged about the disappearance of the child.
Sources in Delhi Police said the investigating team tried to locate the child’s parents for two months, but when nothing came of it, they registered a first information report (FIR) in July at the Paschim Vihar East police station.
The FIR was lodged under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 302 (murder), 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence) and section 6 (sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
“Autopsy revealed dilation in her private parts, abrasions on her forehead. She had suffered other injuries that hinted at a sexual assault. The cause of death was cerebral injury. After taking legal opinion, the FIR was registered under sections of POCSO,” a senior police officer said. DNA samples of the child have been preserved.
The police have made various efforts to identify the toddler, but have made little headway so far. “Neither the victim nor the accused have been identified in the matter,” the senior police officer said.
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A search for child’s identity
Police officers said that they have checked across Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh for missing persons’ complaints but nothing has been found yet.
“Police teams have visited clusters of jhuggis, places where construction workers live in all the neighbouring and bordering areas of Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, and spoken to families to establish the victim’s identity. Nothing concrete has been found yet,” said Harendra Kumar Singh, deputy commissioner of police (DCP), Outer District.
“CCTV footage of the area has been screened. The investigation is on,” he added.
Sources in Delhi Police said that no one contacted them even after photographs were published in newspapers and uploaded on the Zonal Integrated Police Network (Zipnet).
The toddler in the pink t-shirt is now one of hundreds of unidentified bodies that are found in Delhi every year, some of them murder victims.
Police officers say it is crucial to identify the victim first in order to nab the accused in murder cases. This year, as of November 30, Delhi had 14 unsolved murder cases where the victims are yet to be identified.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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