Girl dead in bucket raped & killed in Thane's Bhiwandi, 1 held

BHIWANDI: Two days after the decomposed body of a six-year-old girl was found dunked in a plastic bucket, with its lid on, in Bhiwandi, a 33-year-old man who lived as a tenant in the locality was nabbed from Bihar in connection with the crime on Sunday.

The child's body was found in a makeshift tenement on Friday. The accused had been staying in the makeshift tenement since a month, the police said. The man, whose identity was not immediately revealed by the police, was being escorted from Bihar to Bhiwandi at the time of filing this report late Sunday evening and the police team was slated to reach Bhiwandi on Monday.

Deputy commissioner of police Navnath Dhavale confirmed that a man had been arrested in Bihar in connection with the case.

On Sunday, a police source said on the condition of anonymity that it is a case of rape and murder. A day earlier, a post-mortem done at JJ Hospital, Byculla, was 'inconclusive' about the cause of death. The police have now clarified that some confusion prevailed initially.

The child had gone missing from her Bhiwandi home on Thursday and the body was recovered on Friday. The girl's parents who work for a factory in the vicinity were at their workplace when the girl went missing. When they got home in the evening, their elder son told them that he had not seen his sister all afternoon. The bucket, in which the body was found, was a common plastic one, typically used in households.

A case of murder had been registered on the basis of circumstantial evidence.