GURUGRAM: The body of a three-year-old girl, mutilated and naked with her head crushed, was found on Monday morning lying in a pool of blood in a room built for storing cattle fodder, around 300 metres from the shanties where she lived with her parents in Gurugram The child was put through horrifying brutality - she was raped and a wooden stick was inserted into her private parts before her skull was smashed with a stone by her attacker, believed to be a 20-year-old man who works as a construction labourer. The savage assault also left injury marks all over her. The stick was found to have broken inside her body while it was being removed during the postmortem.The child, the fourth born to parents from Bengal who came to Gurugram and earn a livelihood, had been missing since Sunday afternoon.They lived in a slum cluster on a barren plot in Sector 66 that is home to a large number of labourers who live in cramped rooms with no sanitation or kitchens. Adjacent to this is a cowshed with adjoining rooms for storing cattle fodder.The body was found at one such room. According to police, the three-year-old girl was playing outside her home when she was lured away by the accused. It’s not clear if she was drugged before the vicious assault — no one heard her crying for help. It was when her parents returned from work in the evening on Sunday that they noticed she was missing and alerted neighbours.The parents made calls and searched late into the night and had decided to file a police complaint the next day. They resumed their search at daybreak on Monday. It was one of the neighbours who went looking in the fodder rooms of the cowshed around 10.30am and found her dead. They informed police and a team from Sector 65 police station rushed to the spot, followed by senior officers and a forensics team."The forensic team has collected samples from the spot. Four teams — two each from the police station and the crime branch — have been formed to track down the accused, Sunil (20), a worker from Uttar Pradesh," said ACP (crime against women-south) Shakuntala Yadav, adding that they have got some leads and are expected to arrest him at the earliest.A case was registered at Sector 65 police station under Section 302 (murder) of IPC and Section 4 (sexual assault) of POCSO Act . Sunil had arrived in Gurugram a week ago and was staying with his two sisters, who live in the same locality. Police recorded the statements of both his sisters, who work as domestic helps in housing societies in the area.The accused, an alcohol addict, was looking for a job while staying with his sisters, police said. The body was handed over to the family after autopsy. Dr Deepak Mathur, the forensic expert who conducted the postmortem, said a wooden stick was inserted into both her anus and vagina, a portion of which broke and remained inside the body. “Her skull was broken and bone shards have gone deep inside the head. It seems she was hit with a stone or brick,” said Dr Mathur, adding that there were multiple injuries on her body. She died due to excessive bleeding and deep injury on her head," he said.

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