Special Correspondent, BeyondHeadlines
Coimbatore: The killer of the little girl whose burnt body was discovered on March 1 was arrested yesterday in Coimbatore. The charred body of seven-year-old G Anusiya was found on Tuesday evening at Oor Naicker Thottam in Udayampalayam here. The class two student was last seen with a relative S Govindan at a grocery shop near her house.
The police picked up 23-year-old Govindan for interrogation, and he confessed that he had lured the child away. The police said that he was a necrophile, a person who has a sexual attraction to corpses. According to the police, Govindan also confessed to killing and raping a 21-year-old college girl G Kanagalakshmi in his hometown, Uthangarai, in Krishnagiri District in January.
“Our investigation has revealed that Govindan is a necrophile, and he has murdered a college girl in Uthangarai,” Police Commissioner C Sylendra Babu told BeyondHeadlines (BH). The police are now probing his involvement in other murders as well.
The gruesome killing and rape of the child shocked the residents, who are yet to recover from the abduction, rape and murder of a school girl and her brother by a cab driver in October 2010.
On Monday afternoon, Anusiya returned from school at 4 p.m. Her mother Govindammal had gone to Salem to visit her daughter, the police said. Anusiya’s father, D Govindan, a construction laborer, and the accused Govindan were allegedly drinking together outside the house when the girl was playing with her friends.
Around 7 p.m., Anusiya’s father sent her out to buy him beedis. When she came back, the accused Govindan asked her to buy a packet of cigarettes, the police said. The girl ran back to the shop but did not know which brand to buy. When she returned empty-handed, the accused Govindan, who was drunk, accompanied her to the shop. The police said that he then took her to a deserted spot about one kilometer away from her house, offering to give her money if she helped him clear the bushes. The unsuspecting child followed him into a thatched shed.
He allegedly gagged and strangled her and then poured petrol on her face and burned her. The police alleged that after dousing the flames, he raped the girl.
However, the resident medical officer at the city general hospital said that rape could not be confirmed because the body was charred. Swab will be done to confirm whether the child was raped, he said.
The Police said that when Anusiya’s mother returned, she launched a hunt for her missing daughter. The accused Govindan also joined in the search. Anusiya’s brother told the police that he last saw his sister with the accused Govindan.
The police picked Govindan up and interrogated him. “He liked to deface his victims before raping them,” the police commissioner said. After killing the college girl in Uthangarai in January, he smashed her face with huge stones, he added.
Govindan is married and worked as a construction laborer in Coimbatore with the girl’s father. “His wife told us that he had no idea that he was a killer and had never ill-treated her. We do not know what turned him into a killer,” the commissioner informed BH.
