Surat: A three-year-old girl, who had been reported missing, was found dead a day later in Limbayat area of the city on Monday. She was subjected to brutal sexual assault and then murdered by the culprit, who is yet to be arrested by the police.The body of the girl, daughter of a migrant labourer, was found from ground floor of the same building where she lived with her parents on first floor. Several police teams began a search for the girl after her parents filed a missing-person report.A 25-year-old, also a migrant, but from another state, is suspect in the case. He was with police on Monday morning when the search was on for the girl. When his room was initially searched, police had failed to locate the body of the girl. However, he disappeared after a few hours, subsequent to which police again searched his locked room to find the body of the girl which was stuffed in a plastic sack and a bucket kept over it.The body was sent for postmortem and it was revealed that the girl had been raped and then murdered. However, the cause of death will be known once the detailed report comes. The police registered a case of murder and sexual assault at Limbayat police station against the accused who was also booked under the provisions The Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.The 30-year-old father of the minor girl informed the police at about 8.30pm on Sunday about her disappearance. He told the police that his daughter was playing outside their house until 8pm but was not seen thereafter.“The body of the girl was found in a room located near her house and the suspect has been identified. Investigations into the case will be done by an assistant commissioner of police under the supervision of a deputy commissioner of police,” city police commissioner said Satish Sharma said.Three minor girls were raped within 48 hours in the city in the last week of September.During the same period, a minor girl was allegedly raped by a migrant worker in Sabarkantha district, triggering hate attacks on migrants in different parts of Gujarat.

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