A three-year-old girl was found dead in a dumpyard on Tiruvottiyur-Manali Road on Sunday. Police suspect a neighbour could have smothered her to death.
The girl went missing on Saturday evening from her house in the 26th Block of Tsunami Quarters in Ennore. Palani, the father of the victim, said his daughter usually played with some children who lived in a house nearby on the same block. On Saturday, his daughter did not return home and his wife Kalairani got anxious.
She enquired with their neighbours, one of whom told her that the girl had not come there to play.
Palani, working as a labourer in a factory in Choolai, rushed home on receiving information that his daughter was missing and filed a complaint at the Ennore police station.
On Sunday morning, the police received information from ragpickers that the dead body of a girl child had been found in the dumpyard.
Police officers rushed there and identified the child to be the missing three-year-old.
Post-mortem
The body was sent to Government Stanley Hospital for post-mortem examination.
According to the police, preliminary investigation revealed that the child could have been suffocated to death by smothering. The police have detained a woman neighbour. Asked if the girl had suffered any sexual assault, a senior police officer said the medical test report had not been received.
The murder shocked the residents of the locality as it came in the wake of the murder of a seven-year-old girl by a 25-year-old neighbour in Mangadu on February 5.
