Rajasthan— The tight-knit community in Lopra village of Mavli police station area in Udaipur district was left horrified and grieving after the brutal killing of a young 9-year-old girl. A barbaric act of sexual assault was committed and, in what can only be described as brutality personified, the child was dismembered into ten parts and discarded in plastic bags, inside a ruined structure.

Kamlesh Rajput, the victim's neighbor, was apprehended by Udaipur police on Sunday, on the charges of rape and murder in connection with the case. The heinous act was premeditated, as Rajput had lured the young girl to accompany him and then viciously attacked and mutilated her body. The victim had gone missing on March 29th, and her father had reported the incident to the local police station. However, it took four days for the authorities to take the matter seriously, much to the chagrin of the victim's family.

Accused, a school drop-out

On April 1st, the police discovered the body parts packed inside two plastic bags dumped in a dilapidated structure close to the village temple. A massive search operation was launched by the police, and finally, the accused was apprehended. Udaipur Superintendent of Police, Vikas Sharma, noted that the accused, who lived near the crime scene, was a school dropout and unemployed. Inconsistencies in eyewitness accounts meant that the police had to rely on traditional investigative methods to solve the crime.

The family reported that the young girl had returned home from school on March 29th and left immediately to meet her father while he was working in the fields. A search was launched when she failed to return after several hours. At first, the police did not show due concern towards the family's plight, but the intervention of the local legislator, Dharm Narayan Joshi, expedited the search efforts. It was after the legislator's intervention that the authorities directed the local police station to expedite efforts to trace the child.

Community in shock

The discovery of the victim's body parts has left the Udaipur community in shock, with the police noting that advanced forensic techniques would be employed to bring the guilty to book at the earliest. The police would further investigate the role of the accused's parents too, since he was living with them in the same house where the crime was committed, the SP said.

The young girl was not only an innocent victim but also the only daughter and youngest of 5 siblings in the family. The parents are devastated by their loss, and the mother is inconsolable, unable to comprehend the senseless cruelty that befell her daughter.