Child kidnapped from Jamshedpur station, then raped and beheaded

In a savage crime that has left the nation in shock, a three-year-old girl was strangled after being allegedly gang-raped by two men who had kidnapped her from her mother's side in Jharkhand's Jamshedpur. The men, arrested on July 27, have not been able to explain why the child's head is missing, reports NDTV.

Rinku Sahu and Kailash, the police say, led search teams to the spot where they had allegedly dumped the body of the little girl in a plastic bag. The railway police have tried to find the missing part using sniffer dogs, but heavy rain in Jamshedpur has complicated the search.Rinku Sahu, who has a long criminal record, was released recently on bail; he was serving time for kidnapping a child and attempting to kill her in 2015.

He and his friend Kailash, both in their 30s, allegedly told the police they gang-raped the child over a whole day and strangled her because she wouldn't stop crying.

Her body was found on Tuesday, behind bushes and amid garbage around four km from the railway station.

Last Thursday, the girl was sleeping next to her mother at the Tatanagar railway station when she went missing. CCTV footage showed a man in t-shirt and shorts, believed to be Rinku, walking away with the sleepy child in his arms.

A few hours later, her frantic mother went to the police. She reportedly told them she suspected her partner Monu Mondal, the man she had left her husband for and traveled with from Purulia in Bengal. Monu Mondal, who was with her at the platform, has also been arrested and is being investigated for child trafficking.

The security footage helped the police track down the main suspects. "I just picked her up and took her and by mistake. I fell, and I got scared," Rinku Sahu told reporters.

Rinku Sahu's mother is a constable and neighbours claim she helped him get away lightly with previous crimes. A father of three, he had allegedly kidnapped and assaulted many children before. Kailash's father is a jawan posted in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Jamshedpur incident has surfaced when the Unnao rape survivor's horrific experience is making headlines. The teen is on the ventilator after a car crash on Sunday that her family says was plotted by the man she has accused of raping her -- Kuldeep Sengar, a four-time lawmaker expelled today by the BJP.