AHMEDABAD/SURAT: Cracking the rape and murder of the 11-year-old girl in Surat, the Ahmedabad crime branch has arrested the prime accused and detained three others for the crime which has turned out to be a harrowing tale of brutality that evokes memories of the torture that Delhi’s Nirbhaya was subjected to in 2012.The crime branch sleuths arrested Harsayai Gurjar, 35, from Gangapur in Rajasthan’s Sawai Madhopur district while three others including his brother Harisinh and two other brothers – Naresh and Amarsinh Gurjar — have been detained. These two brothers were working as supervisors with Harsinh.The girl’s body having 87 injuries, including severe ones in her private parts inflicted by a stick-like object, was found in the bushes on Jiav-Budia Road in Bhestan area under the Pandesara police jurisdiction on April6. Harsayai and his brother, both natives of Gangapur, and presently living in Pandesara area of Surat, are working as labour contractors for marble fitting.Harsayai, father of two, had bought the girl and her widowed mother from a man in Gangapur by paying him Rs 35,000.They were brought as bonded labourers from Rajasthan to Surat on March 15.Sources said that Harsayai started sexually exploiting the girl’s mother and raped her several times as soon they started living in a room of his three-storey house. However, he planned to eliminate the widow who had started objecting to his advances and feared that she would expose him. The widow went missing on March 20 after which Harsayai preyed on the 11-yearold girl and confined her in Harisinh’s room who was then in Gangapur.Deputy commissioner of police, crime branch, Deepan Bhadran , said, “For several days, Harsayai raped and brutally tortured the girl. On April 5, he strangulated her to death as it was getting difficult to confine her anymore.”Other body is almost surely of victim’s motherKiran Chaudhary, inspector, crime branch, told TOI, “On the night of April 5, Harsayai took her body in the car and dumped it in the bushes on Jiav-Budia Road around 2km from his house. When he returned home, Naresh woke up and started questioning him. Harsayai told him that he had killed the girl and threatened to kill him also if he revealed anything.”“From the CCTV footage, police traced the car owner and finally reached Harisinh, who said that Harsayai, who was in Gangapur for the past few days, could be behind the crime,” Pradipsinh Jadeja , the state’s junior home minister, told media persons.Crime branch was roped in for investigation on April 15, following the national uproar over the Kathua and Unnao gang-rape cases and Surat police’s failure to get leads, either in establishing the girl’s identity or that of the culprits.On April 10, police had found the decomposed of a woman on Jiav-Budia Road who, in all probability, is the girl’s mother. Harisinh identified the woman’s clothes, which almost confirms that she was the girl’s mother. DNA samples have been sent for forensic tests.

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