Gurugram serial rapist-killer preyed on nine girls; bludgeoned victims' skull, legs with brick

NEW DELHI: Days after a three-year-old child was raped and murdered in Gurugram Sector 66, a 20-year-old man was arrested for the brutal crime. 

Gory details shared by police stated that the minor was mercilessly tortured, a long wooden stick inserted in her vagina and her skull bludgeoned by a brick. The victim had multiple injuries all over her body. A plastic bag covered her dead face.

Sunil Kumar was arrested for the heinous crime following a massive manhunt by the police spread across three states.

Within hours of the arrest, the accused had confessed to nine crimes, all involving raping and murdering little girls aged between three and seven. Four of the cases are in Delhi, three in Gurugram, and one each in Jhansi and Gwalior.

"He used to first break the legs of the victims before attempting rape," said Subhash Boken, an assistant sub-inspector and public relations officer with the Gurugram police told Reuters. "Then he would murder them."

Kumar was unemployed and occasionally worked as a daily labourer. His modus operandi was targeting young girls who went to pick up food at community kitchens, offering them sweets or money, and abduct them, Boken quoted him as having told police.

Using the same methodology, the accused lured the three-year-old toddler in Gurugram on November 11 with chocolates and took her to an empty room at a labourers` colony in Sector 66. A day later, a neighbour discovered the naked body of the child, lying in a pool of blood, inside a room in the slum. 

The accused had come to Gurugram to visit his mother and sisters and later fled to his native village in Jhansi district from where he was arrested.

Kumar, often ate in community kitchens such as bhandaras and langars, and slept in parks and on the streets. He had no mobile phone, making it easy for him to prey on little children, said reports.

A court on Tuesday granted police remand of the man for eight days, Boken said, adding that he did not yet have a lawyer. 

Police have already linked three cases of dead children to his statement and are investigating the rest, Boken added. 

One of first of known victims was a four-year-old girl in Gurugram in November 2016. Her brutalised body was found near a garbage dump in the bushes behind Omaxe Mall on Sohna Road. Two months later, in January 2017, another five-year-old's decaying, with similar injuries, was found in a water tank near Rajiv Chowk, said reports.