Chennai: Neighbour confesses to have killed child for gain

Chennai: The city police has solved the murder of sexually assaulted three-year-old girl, with the arrest of a woman from the neighbourhood, on Monday.

The cops are also questioning the woman’s relative and her paramour in connection with the sexual assault meted out to the child.

The arrested woman was identified as Revathi, (26), resident of a Tsunami rehabilitation colony in North Chennai. Valuables, a gold pendent, silver anklets and hip chain, missing from the deceased, were recovered from a local pawnshop where Revathi pledged them.

Revathi, mother of two children, landed in the police net after one of her children spilled the beans about having seen the deceased visiting their home last before she went missing.

Revathi on sustained interrogation confessed to have been party to the crime.
“She maintains that she only gagged the child as it raised an alarm, and the child died subsequently. She disposed of the corpse in a garbage bin. Revathi is not able to make her ends meet while living with her two siblings and her father in the same house,” a senior police officer privy to the investigation told DC.

The gruesome incident came to light after the corpse was found in the garbage yard in Tiruvottiyur by the conservancy workers, on Sunday.

The information was passed on to the Tiruvottiyur police whose initial inquiries led to Ennore police where the parents of the deceased child had lodged a missing complaint.

The bereaved family claimed that Revathi was a total stranger to them, and had taken the child home in the pretext of making it play with her child. When the family went looking for the child, Revathi told them that she sent the child back home as it began whining to see her mother. Her father and her paramour were being questioned to ascertain their role in the offence.