SrinagarA Special Police Officer (SPO) has been arrested for his involvement in the kidnapping and murder of 8-year-old nomad girl Asifa Bano of the Rasana village in the Hiranagar area of the Kathua district, a top officer of the Crime Branch of the police said in Jammu on Saturday.
The evidence against the SPO, Deepak Khajuria (28), is solid, and medical evidence shows that the victim had been raped before murder, reports from Jammu quoted the Additional Director General of Police for the Crime Branch, Alok Puri, as having said.
Without disclosing when Khajuria had been taken into custody, the police said that services of the forensic sciences department were being utilized to link him to the rape.
The SPO, posted at the Hiranagar police station, had been a part of the police team searching for the girl when her family first reported her missing on Jan 10, the reports further said.
According to the police, the motive of the crime was to spark fear in the nomad community.
Khajuria has confessed to the crime when confronted with the evidence, the police said.
His is the second arrest in the case since January 19 when the government had said that the Kathua police had arrested a 15-year-old boy who had confessed to the killing.
The minor accused, who identity has not been disclosed due to the provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act, has, according to the police claimed to have strangulated the girl when she resisted his rape attempt.
Legislators have repeatedly been questioning the lack of action from the police for a week after the girl went missing, and asking how a minor alone could have carried the victims body to it its hiding place.
Asifa Bano had been missing since January when she had failed to return home from watering horses in Rassana forests , and her body was found on January 17.
The next day, after protests rocked the area, the Kathua police had said that an SIT under SDPO border, had been set up to investigate the case and a medical report of the murdered girl was expected within a couple of days.
On January 20, the government transferred the Station House Officer of the Hiranagar police station, ordering a magisterial probe, and three days later, on January 23, handed the case over to the Crime Branch. -inputs from GNS, Agencies
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