Gujarat: School principal arrested for sexually assaulting and murdering a 6-year-old girl
#News Bureau September 23,2024
Dahod police in Gujarat said that the principal of a government primary school has been arrested for allegedly killing a six-year-old girl student who had protested against the school principal’s sexual harassment.
SP Rajdeep Singh Jala said that the police had started investigation after the girl’s body was found inside the school premises in a village in Singwad taluka on Thursday. Investigation revealed that the principal of the government school, Govind Nat, gagged the girl when she protested during sexual harassment.
“Around 10.20 am on Thursday, the principal, who was on his way to school in his car, agreed to take the girl to school in his car at the request of the girl’s mother. Students and teachers told the police that the girl did not come to school that day,” the SP said. When questioned, the principal initially insisted that he had dropped the girl to school after putting her in his car, the police officer said. But when questioned, he confessed to having raped and murdered the girl before the police.
Giving information about the investigation, the police said that while on the way to school, Principal Govind started sexually assaulting the girl, when she resisted, he closed her mouth and nose to prevent her from screaming, due to which the girl fainted.
The police officer said, “The principal reached the school and parked his car with the girl’s body. At 5 pm, he took the body out and threw it behind the school building. After this, he kept her school bag and slippers in her class.” When the police asked the children of the class and other teachers, they came to know that the girl had not come to school that day. Whereas the girl’s mother had told the police that the school principal was going to school in his car, so he had requested to take the girl to school in the car.
Technical analysis and the time of leaving the school in the evening made principal Govind Natt the prime suspect in the case and after interrogation, he confessed to the crime, the SP said. A day after the girl’s body was found, her postmortem report revealed that she had died due to strangulation, the SP said.
When the girl did not return home after school hours, her parents and relatives launched a search and found her lying unconscious on the campus behind the school building. She was rushed to Limkheda Civil Hospital where doctors declared her dead, they said. The postmortem then revealed that the girl had been strangulated.
