JOIN USThe fragile lifeless body of five-year-old Shahista Sabah bore tell-tale marks of burns, needle pricks, thrashing and severe starvation.
The little one had cried for help for almost eight months at the residence of a Police Head Constable in Malkapur of Medak district, 40 km from here, before succumbing to torture.
The police are now saying that the girl had been abducted by the constable and his wife from an Urs festival in Gulbarga in July 2014.
It was on January 29 that the Medak district police tried in vain to rescue Shahista from the home of Sayed Zakir Husain after some neighbours complained about the torture. By the time DSP Tirupatanna and team reached Malkapur, the child was in a coma and died during treatment the same day.
According to neighbours, the child was made to do daily chores for Husain’s wife Razia Sultana. The couple ill-treated and harassed Shahista. Neighbours complaints had fallen on deaf ears of the Bollaram police and the Child Line director. It was only after Medak district SP Sumathi intervened, DSP Tirupatanna ventured to rescue the child in vain.
The DSP told reporters that the head constable and his wife tortured Sabah, which is not her real name, and slammed her head against the wall. They inflicted burns using a red-hot needle.
They also starved her for months. Doctors confirmed that the girl died of severe injury to her skull.
On seeing the baby's photo in newspapers, her real parents’, Rajendranagar-based couple Mohammad Mahabub and Reshma Begum, reached Sangareddy on Wednesday and told police that the girl abducted by the Head constable is their third daughter Nauseen Begum.
She had gone missing from an Urs festival in KBS Dargah on July 28 last year.After searching for her in vain, the parents had complained at the local police station and returned to Hyderabad.
The Medak police have despatched the couple along with district police to Gulbarga to investigate the abduction angle as Husain claimed that he found the girl abandoned at the Urs.