A six-year-old girl child was kidnapped, raped and strangulated to death on 18 May allegedly by her 21-year-old neighbour, who was arrested on 21 May and the district administration demolished the illegally constructed part of the accused’s house in Burhanpur city of Madhya Pradesh two days later on Thursday.

According to police, the heinous crime occurred when the victim had gone to the Aanganwadi centre in her locality along with her younger sister on 18 May. The younger sister returned home from the centre earlier while the victim was coming home alone in the hot afternoon later.

The accused, Gaurav alias Kushal allegedly took advantage of the deserted street due to the extreme heat and kidnapped the girl. He brought her to his house located just about 50 metre away from the victim’s house.

Police said the accused raped the child and then strangulated her to death. He then dumped her body in a dilapidated and uninhabited structure close to his house.

When the child did not return home, her parents searched for her and subsequently lodged a missing person complaint with the police. During the search operation, the police found the child’s body from the ramshackle house on 20 May.

A postmortem confirmed that the girl had been sexually assaulted and strangled to death. Following that, the police rounded up some suspects and eventually zeroed down on Kushal.

He was arrested on 21 May.

Sources said that during interrogation Kushal told the police that he had watched a porn movie before committing the rape and after murdering the girl, he even went to the gym in the evening and attended a ‘satsang’ (religious function) at a relative’s house in the night.

Locals of the city gathered at the Shikarpura police station in the city, where Kushal was kept, and staged a demonstration demanding capital punishment and razing of his house. Irate residents also protested outside the Collector’s office.

The Burhanpur district administration reached Kushal’s house on Thursday morning along with a heavy police force and bulldozers.

Burhanpur Municipal Corporation Commissioner Sandeep Srivastava said the authorities razed the illegally built structure in the house of the accused.