‘Hang Rehan’, says mother of minor who was raped, murdered in Mumbai’s Nehru Nagar

“Hang him” was the instant reaction of the mother of the nine-year-old girl who was allegedly raped and murdered by Rehan Qureshi on March 7, 2010 at the terrace of police quarters opposite the Nehru Nagar police station.

“Who gave him the right to take away life of my daughter in such a way?” questioned the mother. “My daughter will not return but there should be justice, and he should be hanged.” The girl’s family shifted from their old house five years ago to another place in Kurla (east). But the memories are still fresh. “It was evening and my daughter was playing outside. I had cooked food and stepped out to call her for dinner but she was nowhere to be found. She had disappeared,” the mother recounted.

“That night was very painful. My husband and I along with several residents of our chawl searched for her everywhere, but to no avail,” she said.

“At around 4 in the morning, when we returned home, my husband was so tense that he started to hallucinate. He could hear my daughter crying for help saying “papa, save me” and he ran out of the house once again to search her,” she recalled.

The police, who were also informed by then, traced the body in the morning. The minor dead body of the girl was found on the terrace of the police quarters opposite the Nehru Nagar police station.

Incidentally, the then senior police inspector from Nehru Nagar stayed in the same building along with other police officers. The quarters do not have any lift . The police pointed out that the accused walked with the girl to the terrace of the four- storey building.

“I never lost hope, even though our relatives told me that the culprit may never get caught. God is with us,” she said. Things have changed since in Nehru Nagar as people have become more cautious. But lack of security in slums, where children play, make them vulnerable to kidnappings and sexual assaults. There are, however, more CCTV cameras for the police to scan.