New Delhi: The big development emerged in the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl in Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa, have found that her teenage brother sexually assaulted her after watching a pornographic video on mobile and later killed her, then his mother and two older sisters helped in the cover-up the incident, an official said.

The police solved the case and arrested the victim’s 13-year-old brother, their mother and two sisters 17 and 18 years old. This followed extensive interrogation of 50 individuals and thorough questioning of the accused, and based on technical evidence, he said on Saturday. 

“A nine-year-old girl was raped and strangulated to death under Jawa police station limits on April 24, following which the police had registered a case and started a probe,” Superintendent of Police Vivek Singh said, PTI reported.

“The body of the victim was recovered from the courtyard of her house where she was sleeping at the time of the incident,” he added.

After the interrogation of the family members, it turned out that the victim’s 13-year-old brother slept next to her during the night. It was found that the teenage boy raped his sister after watching obscene videos on the mobile phone, he said.

When the victim threatened to inform about the incident to her father, the boy strangled her and later woke up his mother and confided in his mother. She then found that the victim was still alive. On seeing that, the accused again strangled her, Singh said, PTI reported.

Later, his two elder sisters also woke up and all of them changed the spot of their beds to different spots before informing the police to mislead the probe. However, they finally admitted to their crime after being repeatedly interrogated, he said.

The official stated that further legal actions are being pursued following the detention of the boy, his two sisters, and their mother.

“The police received information on April 24 morning that the body of the girl was lying in the courtyard of the house. Evidence relating to rape and murder was found in the post-mortem report and an SIT team was constituted for the probe,” Singh said.

To mislead the investigators, the family members initially told the police that the girl died after being bitten by a poisonous insect, he said.

However, the investigation uncovered that there were no signs of anybody entering the house, and family members also denied hearing any sound during the night, he said.