“What wrong did my little daughter do to him [the accused] to murder her? He should be hanged. I am not saying this because I am her father, but that is what anyone would say,” fumed the father of the minor girl who was allegedly murdered even as he threw glances every now and then at the spot where his five-year-old daughter’s body was being examined by the police.
The 34-year-old from Gopalganj in Bihar had been in Kerala for eight years and settled down with his family at Choornikkara near Aluva town three years ago for the sake of his children’s education. The victim was the second eldest among his four children, three girls and a boy, aged 7 years, 5 years, 4 years, and two years.
“This place was safe. That’s why I settled down here. How was I to know that someone would come along and do this to my daughter. Our family hardly knew him as he had come to stay above our apartment just three days ago,” lamented the young father who travels across the State as a false ceiling worker through the week and returns to his family during weekends.
Asked whether he would move out in the wake of the gruesome incident, he said he would need time to process everything. He was in Palakkad when his daughter had gone missing on Thursday evening. One of his acquaintances happened to see his daughter going with the accused and alerted him over phone. He immediately rang up his wife who had left her children for a moment to hang up clothes to dry. That was when his wife searched for her daughter and found her missing.
Incidentally, the acquaintance who alerted him about his daughter being taken away was the very same person who had arranged lodging for the accused. A native of Assam, he was allegedly beaten up by angry neighbours who assembled near the victim’s apartment on Saturday accusing him of being hand in glove with the accused.
“I didn’t know him [the accused] till he turned up in front of the chicken stall where I work seeking help to find a place to stay a few days ago. He spoke to me in Bengali, but I am now told that he was from Bihar,” he said. Asked why he did not stop the accused while seen with the victim, he said that it just did not come to him. He was detained by the police for interrogation from Friday night till the early hours of Saturday.
