Hundreds of Juhu residents protested outside the Juhu police station for several hours after a nine-year-old girl, who had been missing since Thursday, was found dead on Saturday morning.
While the police arrested the accused, it took them over four hours to calm down the protesters. They agreed to disperse only after Additional Commissioner of Police (west region) Manoj Kumar Sharma assured them that he would take strict action against the accused.
The police said that the victim and her family lived in a house in Nehru Nagar in the lane adjacent to the Juhu police station. She went missing on Thursday afternoon after her mother sent her to buy some groceries when she returned home from school. Mr. Sharma said, “The victim left still wearing her school uniform but never returned. After searching for her in vain, her family registered a case of kidnapping. Inquiries were then initiated into the matter.”
Mr. Sharma said that the police searched for the victim on Thursday and Friday and also conducted inquiries with residents of the area. Mr. Sharma said, “We found out that one of the residents, Devendra Vadivel (35), had recently been released from prison after serving a seven-year sentence in a child abuse case. He had been convicted under the Protection of Children against Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. Before his conviction, he also had some cases of assault and other crimes registered against him. On suspicion, we picked him up for inquiries on Friday evening.”
After two hours of interrogation, Mr. Vadivel confessed that he had kidnapped and killed the victim. Sources said he took the body to a public toilet, opened the lid of a drain that ran between two rows of toilet stalls, and dumped it there. The police said that the accused was among the residents who joined the search for the girl.
Victim sexually assaulted
The victim’s partially decomposed body was recovered from the gutter on Saturday morning and sent to Cooper Hospital in Vile Parle for post-mortem examination. The autopsy reports and corroborative investigation confirmed that the accused had sexually abused the victim before killing her. The police have charged the accused with kidnapping, murder and rape under the Indian Penal Code, and sections of the POCSO Act.
After the news of the victim’s body being found spread through the locality, over 500 people from Nehru Nagar poured out onto the streets demanding that the accused be hanged to death at the spot. The crowd was led by women who were wailing over the victim’s gruesome murder. The residents packed the road outside the police station demanding justice and the police had to call for additional reinforcement to control the crowd. Finally, Mr. Sharma addressed the crowd using a loudspeaker and told them about how he had taken strict action against the accused in a similar incident that had taken place within the JJ Marg police station’s jurisdiction while he was the Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone I).
“You might remember that a little girl had fallen prey to a similar crime back then and we had caught the accused. Even though the accused were minors, we ensured that we took the strictest action against them. In this case, the accused is an adult and there is no way he will escape the full force of the law. Most of us here have our own children and know fully well what we would do if, God forbid, our children face something like this. I appeal to everyone to please give the police one chance,” Mr. Sharma said as several residents listened with tears streaming down their faces.
In December 2016, the JJ Marg police booked two teenagers for allegedly kidnapping their neighbour’s three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, killing her, and then trying to get her father to pay ransom. The two 16-year-old accused had strangled the victim at their house before disposing of the body.
