Woman, stepdad held for murder of two-year-old

The murder came to light, when foul smell emanated near the under construction Murugan temple atop a hill at Kammavanpet near Vellore on Sunday. When passers-by checked the place based on suspicion, they were shocked to find the decomposed remains of a two-year-old girl buried under the rocks. The public immediately alerted the VAO, who informed the Vellore taluk police. Acting on the information, the Vellore taluk police rushed and conducted a post-mortem on the spot with the help of doctors from the Vellore Government Medical College Hospital. According to the police, the body of the child has been recovered only after four days of the murder as the body was in an advanced state of decomposition. To track the murder, the police started to check the records of missing children cases, when their counterparts in Arcot informed them of a missing child from Thazhanur. 

Following this, the Vellore taluk police grilled the mother Manjula (23) of the Thazhanur village.  Under sustained interrogation, Manjula confessed that she strangled and killed the child. Later she along with her partner buried the child on the hillock on December 22. 

Preliminary investigations also revealed that she was married twice and had separated from her second husband. It was by that time she developed intimacy with Rajamani of Varagurpudur village near Arcot and both decided to get married. However, both of them found Manjula’s child from the second marriage as a hindrance and decided to kill the child. Both strangled the child and buried the body under the rocks of the hillock. A day after killing the girl, Manjula got married to Rajamani. Both have been arrested and a case has been registered against them.