Mumbai, Nov 19, TEN Network | A 14-year-old girl, who went missing from her house in Mumbai on October 1, was allegedly sexually assaulted, murdered and her body dumped after being burnt in Talasari in Palghar district. A 25-year-old has been arrested by the police.
Police said the suspect had proposed to the teenager. When she declined, he first tried to rape her and eventually smashed a bottle on her head before throttling her.
According to the Samta Nagar police, the suspect has been identified as Ajay Banvashi, 25, a resident of a slum pocket in Kandivali (east). The teenager was his neighbour. Banvashi runs a small shoe cleaning laundry and lives alone. He is a native of Jaunpur in Uttar Pradesh.
The girl went missing from her residence around 2 pm on October 1. The next day, her father filed an FIR alleging that she had been kidnapped. The police checked her mobile phone’s Call Data Record (CDR) and found that she was in contact with Ajay Banvashi.
Banvashi denied involvement. But the police found that he was using another phone. Its call data made it clear that he had made a trip to Talasari that night.
“The suspect was called for questioning a few times but he kept misleading us and denied any involvement in the crime… During sustained questioning, he said that he murdered her and threw the body in Talasari,” said senior police inspector Raju Kasbe of Samta Nagar police station.
The police alleged the accused had lured the girl to his house after which he proposed marriage. When she refused his proposal, he tried to rape her. When she started screaming, he assaulted her with a bottle on her head and strangled her to death with his hands. He packed her body in a sack and took her body to Talasari on his bike in the afternoon.
After sunset, he took her body out of the bag and threw her down a nullah in a forested area along the highway. He also went down the nullah and burnt her body with petrol from his bike. The Talasari police found her body the next day and registered a murder case after the autopsy report came in.
The suspect was produced before a magistrate court on Monday and remanded to police custody till November 25. (HT)
