In a shocking incident that occurred in the Jaitpura area in Varanasi district in Uttar Pradesh, a man who had been convicted of rape and had served a 10-year prison sentence for his crime, raped and killed a new victim, a minor girl.
The Indian Express reports that the accused Pappu Gupta first raped the 12-year-old girl and then slit her throat to kill her because the last time that he had committed the crime his victim had been alive to give a statement in court.
The minor girl was killed after her mother, who runs a shop from home, sent her to fetch something from the nearby market. Gupta was at the shop at the time and had followed the girl.
According to the Indian Express, suspecting Gupta, the police interrogated him but he denied his involvement. Later, when the girl's body was found in the Kerakat area, the police checked Gupta's phone signals and determined that he had been in the area on the night of the crime.
"After the body was recovered, the police collected call details record of Pappu Gupta to ascertain if his cellphone location was in Kerakat area on the evening of November 26," Varanasi SSP Nitin Tiwari told the Indian Express. "A police team later went through the CCTV footage from petrol pumps along the Varanasi-Jaunpur Road and found Pappu was on his scooter in a queue at a petrol pump in Kerakat area."
Gupta confessed that he had stopped the girl and asked her to get on his scooter on the pretext of dropping her when she was walking to the market. Gupta has been charged with rape, murder and also under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).