Coimbatore: The rural police on Sunday arrested a 34-year-old man for raping and murdering a seven- year-old girl at Kasthurinaickenpudur near Pannimadai last Monday.The man, a neighbour of the victim, took her to his grandmother’s house and strangled her during the rape, police sources said.Police identified him as K Santhoshkumar, a resident of Uliyampalayam near Thondamuthur. “He was working as an assistant to an interior decorator. He had got married five years ago and his wife had separated from him within a month. After his grandfather, who was staying at Kasthurinaickenpudur, passed away, he has been staying with his 70-year-old grandmother for the last two months. The victim, who lived next door, used to play with him. On the evening of March 25, the girl, who was playing in front of her house, fell down. Santhoshkumar rushed to the spot and carried her to his grandmother’s house, where he raped her. When she began to cry, he gagged her and strangulated her to death,” a police officer said.Meanwhile, the parents and relatives of the girl had launched a search to find her. “Santhoshkumar kept the body in a gunny bag and dumped it in a room. His grandmother, whose health suddenly deteriorated, died around 9pm. A police team that conducted door-to-door search for the missing girl, did not search the house. After searching for the girl till 2am, Tuesday, the search party disbanded. Around 5am, Santhoshkumar came out of the house and dumped the body near the victim’s house. He covered her face with a T-shirt bearing the logo ‘BS Academy’,” the officer told TOI.Santhoshkumar confessed to the crime to one of the 14 special teams of the rural police, which were interrogating the victim’s neighbours. Police later took him to a shop at Gandhipuram, from where he had bought the T-shirt some months ago.

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