Pune Murder: Lured them with ‘laddoo’: Pune cook murders 2 minor sisters after failed rape attempt; dumps bodies in water drum | Pune News – Times of India

The cook, who was familiar with the victims’ family, lured the girls to his room under false pretenses before committing the crime.

PUNE: Two sisters aged 8 and 9 years, who went missing on Wednesday afternoon while playing near their house in Rajgurunagar, were found dead in the night in a partially filled water storage drum in the first-floor room occupied by an eatery cook in the same building where they stayed.
Early on Thursday morning, a police team arrested the cook (54) from a lodge in Pune city, around 45km from Rajgurunagar. “We took the man into custody from the lodge before he could flee to his native place in West Bengal,” additional superintendent of police (Pune Rural) Ramesh Chopade told TOI.

“During initial questioning by police, the cook admitted to having drowned the two girls in the drum before leaving the spot. He also admitted to having attempted a sexual assault on one of the girls,” Chopde added.
Police arrested the cook for offences under Section 103 (murder) of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and sections 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 (all related to sexual assault and sexual harassment) of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act.
The girls’ father is a conservancy staffer and mother is a daily wage earner. They were away from home when the girls were playing in front of their rented house on the ground floor of the building.
Police said the cook stayed in the first-floor rented room along with the eatery’s few other staffers, who had left five days ago for their native place in Bengal. He was alone in the room. “As the cook was staying there for the last few years, the girls and her family knew him very well,” Chopade said.
The additional SP said, “During questioning, the cook told police that he called the two sisters to his room on the pretext of giving them a ‘laddoo’. When the girls walked into his room, he pushed the elder sister into a small washroom and bolted it from outside. On witnessing this, the younger sister started screaming in an attempt to draw attention of people in the vicinity. The man then picked up a pipe and hit her on the head. He then dragged her to the water drum and drowned her head in it till she died.”
“The cook told police that after the younger sister’s death, he took the elder one out of the washroom and tried to sexually assault her but she too started screaming. The man then sensed trouble and drowned the elder sister in the same drum. He covered the drum with a cloth and left the room,” Chopade said.
When the parents returned home and did not find the girls around, they searched for them and subsequently approached Khed police. Police initially registered a case of kidnapping and began searching for the siblings. A police team reached the neighbour’s room on the first-floor as part of their search operation.
“It was during this exercise that the police found that the girls were dumped in the drum. They were immediately taken to a hospital, where the doctors pronounced them dead,” Chopade said.
“As the cook was not present in his room, our team started searching for him on the suspicion of his involvement in the crime. We got a tip-off that the cook was hiding in a lodge in Pune and planning to flee out of the state. Our team then reached the lodge and took him into custody in the early hours of Thursday,” he said, adding that further investigation was on.