A seven-year-old girl was allegedly raped and killed by a 30-year-old man from her neighbourhood who smashed her head with a stone near Bhiwandi town in Maharashtra's Thane district, the police said on Sunday, adding that the accused has been arrested.
The body of the victim, who was a Class 2 student, was found on Sunday morning, the police said, adding that the incident occurred on Saturday night.
The accused Bharat Kumar Kori (30), who works as a porter, lives in Subhash Nagar area of Karivali village near Bhiwandi, where the victim also resided.
"On Saturday night, Kori kidnapped the girl from outside her house. Thereafter, he took her to an isolated spot nearby and raped her," Bhiwandi senior police official Rajkumar Shinde said.
After the sexual assault, Kori smashed the girl's head with a stone before fleeing the spot, he said.
"A passerby found the body lying in the bushes in the morning and alerted the police," he said.
The postmortem report confirmed that the girl was raped before her murder, Mr Shinde added.
During the probe, the police zeroed in on Kori and arrested him on Sunday morning, he added.
According to police, father of the girl runs an eatery in the locality.
A case was registered against Kori under kidnapping or abducting in order to murder, rape, Punishment for murder and also under various sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act at Bhoiwada police station.
Gurugram Man Kills Wife By Pushing Her Off The Roof, Arrested US Man Charged With Killing Son Has History Of Child Abuse: Police Man Arrested For Murder, Months After Supreme Court Freed Him In Rape Case "Congress Should Be Ready...": Mani Shankar Aiyar's Big INDIA Bloc Remark 3 Marriages, Rs 1.25 Crore: How 'Looting Bride' Targeted Rich Men Bashar Al-Assad's Wife Files For Divorce, Wants To Return To UK: Report IIT Delhi Graduates Get More Than 1,200 Job Offers During Placement Season Deepfake Video Of Sudha Murty Endorsing A Trading Platform Is Viral Who Is Asma Al-Assad, Syrian First Lady Seeking Divorce Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world.