Thane:
A 12-year-old girl was raped and murdered in Maharashtra's Thane district on January 17, police said today.
The girl, a resident of Sharjamori village, was studying in Class 8. She had left for her school on January 16, but did not return home. Her family members lodged a missing complaint with the local police on January 18, police said.
A resident of the same village, Rahul Gajanan Tubanda , has been. The police say he has confessed to the crime. He allegedly took the girl to an isolated spot on the pretext of dropping her home from school on his motorbike and assaulted her, they added.
The accused has been booked under sections 302 (murder) and 376 (rape) of the IPC along with relevant sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.
Yesterday afternoon, police received information about a body lying at a farm in the village. The decomposed body was identified as that of the missing girl. The postmortem report revealed the girl was raped before being killed, police said.