Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan today said people like Asfaq Aslam, the man accused of sexually assaulting a five-year-old girl and strangling her to death in the state's Ernakulam district, are like beasts who "don't deserve to be called humans".
Speaking to NDTV, Governor Khan called for stringent action and said crime against women anywhere is shameful.
"This is very sad and unfortunate," he said, adding it was "absolutely unacceptable" not just in Kerala but everywhere.
The accused in the case was arrested Friday night but retrieving information from him took hours since he was in an inebriated state, said police, even as search operations continued overnight. He had dumped her body in a sack on Friday and confessed to the crime a day later, they said.
The girl went missing Friday evening after she was seen being taken away by the accused in a CCTV footage.
V Muraleedharan, Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs, slammed the Kerala Police, which today apologised to the girl's family on social media for failing to reunite her with them, saying they knew the accused was a "troublemaker" but did nothing.
"Kerala police has apologised on social media, but that is not their duty. The Chief Minister calls the migrant workers - guest workers, but he should at least know the basic backgrounds. Doesn't the cops keep a record of the interstate workers in Kerala?" he said.
The girl's family is from Bihar and her parents are migrant workers settled in Kerala for eight years now. She is survived by her father, mother, an elder sister, and a younger brother.
The accused had recently moved to the building where the girl and her family lived, said police, adding that he used garbage and sacks to cover her body after dumping it in a marshy area.
He was arrested based on the CCTV footage, but interrogation was delayed as he was intoxicated.
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