VisakhapatnamGirl's Death: Complaint of Rape and Murder by Youth Being Probed

Visakhapatnam: The agency police and revenue department exhumed the body of a 12-year-old tribal girl based on a suspicion she was raped and then murdered.

The body was exhumed in a remote village in GK Veedhi mandal on Saturday and the viscera was sent for forensic examination.

The victim girl was a Class-V student at a government school. The family now suspects the 12-year-old girl was raped and murdered by an 18-year-old youth, who went into the victim’s house in the morning on January 2 when her parents were away for harvest in the agricultural fields on the outskirts of the village.

When the parents returned home from work around 9am, they saw their daughter hanging from a log in the house. She was dead. Initially, they thought she died by suicide. They buried the body on January 2 without informing the police.

One of the family members had observed some injury marks on the girl’s neck but let it pass.

A day after the death, two girls who were known to the victim, said a youth had entered the house when the girl was alone there on January 2 and sexually assaulted her. The two girls said though they wanted to rescue the victim, they could not do anything.

On hearing this, the parents were advised by village elders to petition the GK Veedhi police station. On Saturday, a team of medical experts conducted an autopsy on the body while the police launched a search for the youngster.