Coimbatore girl Muskan Jain, 10, kidnapped by her van driver on Friday with her brother Rithik, was raped by her abductor before she was killed, postmortem reports show.
While Muskan’s body was recovered from Parambikulam Aliyar Project canal near Vavipalayam, around 77 km from Coimbatore, on Saturday, her seven-year-old brother’s body was found in the same canal on Sunday. The boy’s body bore bruise marks left by the killers, prime accused Mohan and Manoharan, a tractor driver and Mohan’s aide who was arrested on Sunday. The police said Mohan, who has a 10-month-old daughter of his own, apparently committed the crime in cold blood and has showed no remorse.
The police had arrested Mohan Saturday evening and Manoharan was picked up on Sunday morning from Pollachi where he was hiding. Coimbatore police commissioner Sylendra Babu told reporters that after Mohan picked up the two children from near their house on the pretext of taking them to school, he drove straight to Pollachi. He is said to have gone to Manoharan’s house twice and, not finding him there, waited for a while.
After Manoharan arrived, they went to a phone booth to call the children’s father, textile businessman Ranjit Jain, for a ransom of `20 lakhs. But they decided not to make the call, fearing that it would be traced. Then they took the children to a remote place, beat up the boy and tied him up while they raped the girl.
After that the two pushed the children into the canal. The commissioner said that it appeared that they had done the crime by 10.45 am, when the police received a complaint from the Jains that their children had been kidnapped.
“We immediately placed a caller ID device at the Jain residence and deployed eight teams to investigate the crime.”
Doctors who conducted the postmortem said it was the most gruesome autopsy they had ever performed. “It is going to give us sleepless nights,” one of them said.