Bhopal, Oct 17 An angry crowd tried to storm a police station in Bhopal on Saturday, a day after a 12-year-old girl was found murdered in an abandoned building, demanding that the accused be handed over to them or hanged.
Personnel at Bairagarh police station stopped the protesters and deployed additional force to prevent the situation from escalating, a police official said.
The girl’s body was found on Friday in an abandoned building behind Krishna Complex in Bairagarh, following which residents staged a protest outside the police station and blocked traffic, demanding the death penalty for the accused.
Police have arrested a 23-year-old man and registered a case of murder.
The girl lived in a slum settlement on Bairagarh Phatak Road and collected waste plastic for a living, police said.
Her family members said she left home around 8 pm on Thursday but did not return. After searching for her, they lodged a missing person complaint at the police station late that night.
Police and a Forensic Science Laboratory team visited the site on Friday and collected evidence. Preliminary information suggested that a piece of cloth had been stuffed into the girl’s mouth. Pieces of clothing, suspicious material and fragments of an iron rod were also reportedly found at the site.
Additional Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone 4) Sanjeev Pathak told PTI on Saturday that the girl’s body had been recovered from the abandoned building and the suspect was being questioned.
Further legal action would be taken after the postmortem report, he said.
Police have not yet confirmed whether the girl was sexually assaulted and are awaiting the autopsy report.
Police are investigating the motive for the murder and the sequence of events.
(PTI News)
