Salamat Ansari, a 32-year-old man from Bihar, was apprehended by the Bhiwandi City Police in Maharashtra on September 19. He was arrested in connection with the heinous rape and murder of a six-year-old girl in the city. To locate the suspect, three police teams were assembled, under the leadership of DCP Navnath Dhavle.
On September 13, a six-year-old girl was reported missing from a chawl in Fenegaon, Kamatghar. Her parents promptly filed a missing person’s report with the police station on September 14. Due to her status as a minor, the police initiated an abduction report against an initially unidentified individual. This accused party has since been identified as Salamat Ansari.
The police acted swiftly, organising three teams to scour the entire area in search of the girl. While conducting the search, a local resident alerted them to a noxious odour emanating from behind a locked door of a property. The police team forcibly opened the door and made the grim discovery of the girl’s lifeless body, concealed inside an empty container with a lid securely in place.
Following the completion of the panchnama, the girl’s remains were conveyed to JJ Hospital for a post-mortem examination. The initial findings from the post-mortem indicated a sexual assault, leading to the filing of a case under Indian Penal Code sections 376 and 302, along with relevant provisions from sections 4, 8, and 12 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
“Based on technical intelligence and spot evidence, we came to know about the accused who lived in the room on a rented basis for the last one and half months. He worked as a labourer in the city and locked the room for the last two days. We formed one team and dispatched it to Bihar to investigate and nab the accused. With the help of local informers of Bihar, our team made a door-to-door survey and later reached to accused home and nabbed him,” DCP Navnath Dhavle said.
“During the interrogation, the accused-Salamat Ansari revealed that he called a girl on the pretext of giving chocolates, and took her to his room with ulterior intentions, and committed sexual assault. Thereafter, he strangulated her and dumped her in a plastic bucket, and fled after the act,” he added.
As per police records, Ansari is a married man and a father of two children. He arrived to work in the Bhiwandi area of Thane and resided in a chawl adjacent to the victim’s room.
The accused was produced in court and has been remanded in police custody.
