Mob torches man for minor’s rape, murder

NAGPUR - In a case of vigilante justice, a group of enraged villagers beat up and torched a man suspected of raping and killing a three-year-old girl in Maharashtra’s Chandrapur district, police said Wednesday.

The girl, a resident of Savli village, around 150 km from here, had gone out to play and was reported missing since Tuesday afternoon, said Assistant Sub-Inspector Shaikh Rauf of the district police control room.

Her family and neighbours launched a frantic hunt, checking homes of the people in the vicinity in a bid to find her.

Around 8 p.m. Tuesday, they found her body wrapped in clothes in the home of Deepak Pagadpalliwar (28), Rauf said.

She appeared to have been physically assaulted and then killed, he added.

A crowd of nearly 300 people gathered there and Pagadpalliwar was dragged out of his home and thrashed.

After continuously beating him with sticks, stones and metal rods for over five hours, a few of them finally poured kerosene on him and torched him.

The man succumbed to his burns around midnight, police said.

Police Wednesday took custody of the charred remains of Pagadpalliwar and the body of the minor girl and sent them for autopsy.

Rauf said the village observed a shutdown in protest against the rape and murder of the girl even as top district police officials rushed to monitor the situation in the village, around 80 km from Chandrapur district headquarters.

Police have registered complaints of murder against 250 unknown people and efforts are on to identify the culprits.