Odisha minor murder case: Accused addicted to child porn, had sex with corpse, reveals SIT chief

BHUBANESWAR: Gruesome details have emerged in the murder and abduction case of a five-year-old mirror girl in Odisha’s Nayagarh. SIT chief Arun Bothra revealed the gruesome of how the accused first assaulted the five-year-old minor girl, killed her and then tried having sex with the corpse.

Talking to the media, SIT chief Arun Bothra said the arrested youth, Saroj Sethi, is the prime accused in the in Nayagarh minor girl murder case. Bothra further revealed that Saroj Sethi was addicted to child pornography and would frequently watch child pornography on his sister's phone.

The accused saw child pornography on his mobile throughout the night before the day of the crime, added SIT chief Arun Bothra.

Detailing the evidence that has been obtained during the course of the investigation, Bothra said the minor girl, whose house is about 200 metres from that of accused Sethi, used to go to his house with some children of the village to eat berries from their backyard. Also, the minor girl was very close to Sethi’s younger sister.

Accused lured minor, tired to have sex with corpse

On July 14, the accused youth was alone in his house as his mother and sister had left for their respective workplaces. The little girl came at around 10:30 am at his house to ask for some berries. Finding her alone, Sethi lured her into a room and removed her frock.

Later, when he was about to remove her leggings, she resisted and started to scream. As she opposed the assault, Sethi strangled her to death. Following this, he attempted to have sex with the corpse but failed. In the meantime, he had discharged semen on the frock,” Bothra said.

Hunt to find victim’s missing leggings

Further narrating details of the barbaric crime, Bothra said after his failed bid to have sex with body, the accused put the body along with the frock inside a jute sack and dumped it in a bush near a pond and covered the gunny bag with coconut tree branches.

Realizing that he forgot to keep the girl’s leggings in the gunny bag, he again went to his house to get them and later threw them in the pond. The pond is now being emptied to locate the leggings of the victim.

The coconut tree branches will be sent to the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad and National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi for DNA sampling. A joint team of the SIT and Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force are working at the crime scene to retrieve the leggings from the pond. These will be used as evidence, Bothra added.

Teen addicted to child pornography

“The accused admitted that he is addicted to child pornography. The day before the incident, he used his sister’s phone to watch porn videos till 4 am. We have written to Google to verify the Internet browsing history of the cellphone,” said Bothra.

While describing the minor girl's murder as most "brutal and gruesome" in his 22-years of service in the police, Bothra, said, the accused was very clever and therefore deleted the Google history from his mobile phone.

"However, while opening his handset, the murder and rape of a 3-year-old girl popped up. He was watching minor girl's rape and murder cases on the internet in order to find ways to escape it," he said.

Though there is no eyewitness in this incident, the accused has confessed his crime before two persons, of which one has the audio and video recordings of the conversation. During the polygraph test, the accused gave correct answers to all irrelevant questions but lied to all relevant ones, the SIT chief added.

“We are looking for other persons involved in the crime. The accused has been sent to three-day remand starting today and we will share further the findings after that,” Bothra said.

Parents self -motivation bid, opposition pressure brought case to light

The girl was killed on July 14 and her skeletal remains were found from the backyard of her house on July 23. However, it was only after the victim’s parents attempted self-immolation outside the Odisha assembly that the incident came to light.

The couple had reportedly taken the extreme step to draw the attention of the government. They have been moving from pillar to post with their pleas for the arrest of the accused. However, their appeals to Nayagarh SP and Collector fell on deaf ears, they alleged.