SRINAGAR: The police in Kashmir say they have arrested a man for murdering his four-year-old baby girl because he suspected her to be an illegitimate child.
The girl was found dead in an orchard in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district on June 15. Her throat had been slit and body dumped in a jute bag.
Her father had filed a report with the police saying his daughter had been missing since the previous morning.
A statement by the police says that a Special Investigation Team was soon formed to probe into the case.
The SIT found out that the man had choked his daughter to death before slitting her throat with a knife and dumping her body in an orchard.
“The baby was born in less than nine months of her parents’ marriage and her father suspected that she was not his child,” the police statement says.
“Over a period of time this developed into an extreme hatred.”
The statement said that suspicion against the father arose as the girl was last seen in his company. He was called in for questioning and asked to explain the circumstances leading to her getting missing and murdered.
“The accused was arrested and circumstantial, scientific evidence corroborate his involvement in murder of his daughter,” the police statement says.
“Another motive of killing his own daughter was his greed as he was expecting cash compensation from government assuming that the blame for his daughters murder would be laid on militants as his wife was a panch (village head).”
Police said that the man had also misled them regarding the dead girl’s age. She was four years old while her father had said she was eight.
