Teenager rapes, kills 7-year-old girl

11 November 2011, 18:00 PM

Staff Correspondent

A teenaged boy was arrested by Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) from Netrakona on Thursday for allegedly violating and murdering a seven-year-old girl in the city's Khilkhet on November 3. The body of the girl Ishrat Ara Jahan Eva, studying in class I at Al Manarat Model School, was found wrapped in a sack inside a ditch near her Khilkhet Namapara residence on November 7. The arrestee Mohammad Zakir Ahmed, 18, son of Nurul Islam of Kendua in Netrakona, told Rab that he took the girl, his neighbour, into his house around 12:00noon, alluring her of drawing lessons, said Major Rezaul Karim of Rab-1. Zakir, a college student in his first year at Tongi Government College, then violated and strangled her. He gouged out her eyes and poured hot water on the body to make it difficult for identification and dumped it that night, added Rezaul. However, morgue sources informed that the body was decomposing when it was found but its eyes were not gouged out. Zakir misguided the girl's parents by demanding ransom over phone to establish the incident as a kidnapping, said Rezaul. The girl's father Yusuf Ali, a driver of Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation, said he received calls on November 4 and 6 from an unknown person demanding Tk 4 lakh as ransom. The caller also warned not to inform anyone, but later kept the cellphone switched off, he said. Rab officials said Zakir fled the city after the body was recovered. Victim's maternal uncle Mohammad Swapan said they never suspected Zakir as he was always there in the search for the girl.