GHAZIABAD: A seven-year-old girl missing since Saturday afternoon was found dead on the terrace of a mosque in Muradnagar on Sunday morning, her body covered with a gunny bag. The girl’s family has accused the local councillor and his three brothers of murdering her.The girl’s father said he had last seen his daughter accompanying her four-year-old brother to buy a packet of wafers around 12.50pm on Saturday. While her brother returned home, the girl didn’t. The brother, too, couldn’t say anything specific about where he had lost her company. The second of four siblings, the girl studied in Class II of a school in the locality.The girl’s family waited for an hour for her to return and then launched a search in the locality. Around 10pm, they lodged a missing person’s complaint at Muradnagar police station. An FIR was registered against unknown persons under Section 363 (kidnapping) of the IPC. After the body was found on Sunday, police added Section 302 (murder) to the FIR and named Haji Aizaz and his elder brothers, Naushad, Afzal and Izhaar, as accused on a complaint by the father.Aizaz is the sitting councillor of ward number 25 of Muradnagar municipality. Sources said one of the girl’s distant relatives had unsuccessfully contested against Aizaz in the urban local body elections last year.“Aizaz and his brothers were miffed against our family because we never voted for him. There is a political enmity between our families. Three months ago, his sons had thrashed a cousin of mine over a minor quarrel following a spat on WhatsApp. A case had been registered against them,” the father said.Aizaz and his brothers have been absconding ever since a complaint was lodged against them. Their house was found locked on Sunday.The main entrance to the mosque, where the body was found, opens directly opposite Aizaz’s house into an alley. The girl’s house is located a few metres further down.Sources said a portion of the main door of the mosque is always open and unguarded. This means anyone can sneak into the mosque any time of the day. A set of rooms inside the single-storey building is occupied by the imam, Haji Abdul Qadir Kasmi (34), and his family.“A few of us had searched the terrace of the mosque around 2am, but could not find anything. A local resident, Sultan, had climbed to the terrace in the morning to scare away a few monkeys. He noticed the feet of the girl protruding from a gunny bag that covered her body. He alerted all of us. I was on my way to Kandhla in Muzaffarnagar with relatives of the missing girl to meet a priest who we believed could have helped us locate her,” Kasmi said.The girl’s body was in the same set of blue kurta and black pajamas in which she was last seen on Saturday. The body was in a small room that also had a generator. It did not have a door.A police force has been deployed in the area to prevent any possible breakdown in law and order. An autopsy has been conducted on the body. “We can’t rule out a sexual assault. There were abrasive injury marks on her face and head. Prima facie, it appears the girl had been strangled to death and the body put on the terrace. The accused are untraceable at present. We are ascertaining the veracity of the allegations,” Ghaziabad SSP Vaibhav Krishna said.

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