Minor found abused, murdered on Lonavala resort's terrace

Kumar Resort in Lonavala became the centre of a horrific crime investigation after a sevenyearold girl was discovered dead on the terrace after she had been brutally abused and murdered two days after she went missing The girl with partial vision impairment was attending her cousinrsquos wedding there on Sunday nightThe sevenyearoldrsquos body was found rolled in a carpet behind a solar panel on the terrace of the resort two days after she went missingThe girlrsquos father blamed the police for slow action and alleged that he found no cooperation from the resort which is owned by a former MLA from Mumbai The deceased victim and her father had travelled to Lonavala from Indapur in Raigad to attend a weddingThe father said he had originally intended to attend the wedding alone because her vision was blurry in both short and long range But the girl was excited about her cousinrsquos wedding and so he decided to take her along ldquoWe reached Lonavala on Sunday morning around 11 amI dressed my daughter and she said she was looking like Kareena Kapoor I did not know that was the last day I would see herrdquo the girlrsquos father recalled The wedding ceremony began around 530 pm at Kumar Resort and he recalled that his daughter was with him the whole time Later she went to get him soup but did not returnFor some time her father thought she was playing with her cousins He only realised that she was missing around 9 pm when it was time to go home Family members looked for her and called out her name to no avail Finally around 1130 pm the victimrsquos father lodged an FIR at the Lonavala City police station The cops searched for the girl through Monday but could find no sign of herAround 1 pm on Tuesday afternoon two days after she first went missing a resort employee went up to the terrace to clean the solar water heater and he found a rolled carpet behind one of the panels He found the sevenyearold wrapped inside the carpet her clothes were tattered her throat had been slit and her jewellery was missingDoctors at Sassoon General hospital conducted the post mortem and revealed that while the cause of death was the slit throat the victim had several injuries around her private parts that indicated sexual abuse which led cops to add sexual assault and murder to the initial charge of abduction in the FIR The doctors also suspected that she had been murdered before Tuesday as her body was already decomposinglsquoNegligentrsquoThe girlrsquos father claims that she could have been saved if the resort management and police had put in more effort He said that although he had asked to see the resortrsquos CCTV footage his request was denied with different excusesldquoWe approached the manager and pleaded for access to the CCTV footage but they claimed that they did not have the password to view it They also said they did not have the footage saved and tried to hush up the caseLater the management claimed that the cameras were not in a working conditionrdquo he said It should be noted that the police were given access to the footage on Monday He voiced doubts about the copsrsquo effectiveness as wellldquoThe police claimed that they had searched the entire resort on Monday If that is true how come my daughterrsquos body was found on the next afternoon by the resort staffrdquoCopspeakInspector I S Patil who is in charge of the Lonavala City police which comes under Pune Rural Police said ldquoFrom the CCTV footage we know that the girl was last seen around 10 pm on Sunday when she was sitting on the ground floor with a female catererThe marriage was held on the ground floor but her body was found on the terrace four floors above There are no CCTVs on the upper floors so we are looking for other clues At present 40 staffers are being interrogatedrdquoPune Rural Police Superintendent Manoj Kumar Lohiya said ldquoWe have formed four teams for the investigation and I am personally probing the case There has been no negligence If the parent has a complaint they can approach me but the priority is to investigate the case and zero down on the culpritrdquo