Ludhiana, March 14:
A day after a naked body of a young woman was found near railway lines in village Alaud in Khanna, the police solved the blind murder and arrested the accused within 12 hours.
According to the police, the victim is a 16-years-old minor of Iqbal Nagar of Mandi Gobindgarh and she was missing since March 11 evening. The accused had strangled the girl and hit her head with a wall near railway lines. The sexual assault with the victim is yet not confirmed. The victim was in a relationship with the accused for around 10 days.
The arrested accused has been identified as Sanjeet Kumar (26) of Mandi Gobindgarh.
Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP – Khanna) Amritpal Singh Bhatti said that the matter came to light on Thursday after a villager Dalvir Singh and Village Alaud Sarpanch Gurmail Singh alerted the police that a naked body of a young woman was dumped in the fields.
After the police reached the spot, the mouth of the victim was tied with cloth and there was even a head injury. The clothes and slippers of the victim were recovered from the other side of the railway lines.
The police had initially lodged a case under section 103 (1) and 3 (5) of BNS against unidentified accused at Sadar Khanna police station and initiated further investigation to identify the victim and to trace the accused.
“After several announcements and circulating pictures of the victim within the police department, the identity of the victim was confirmed. The victim was identified to be a 16-year-old girl who was hailing from Uttar Pradesh and was presently residing here in Mandi Gobindgarh. The parents informed the police that the girl was missing since March 11 evening,” said DSP.
He added that during investigation it was learnt that the girl had relations with a man Sanjeet Kumar, who used to work as mason, and the girl had shared about it to her sister and even told that Sanjeet had gifted her mobile phone as well.
The family members suspected Sanjeet of abducting the girl on the pretext of marriage and blamed him for killing their daughter.
SI Sukhwinderpal Singh, SHO, Sadar Khanna, said that the police traced Sanjeet Kumar and rounded up him. During questioning, the accused confessed to the crime. He shared that he had strangled the girl to death and even hit her head with the wall on March 11 night after taking her near railway lines.
The police added sections 137, 96 of BNS in the FIR and arrested the accused.
SI said that as of now sexual assault is not confirmed. The postmortem and viscera test report will confirm whether she was sexually assaulted before being murdered.