Body found floating in the sea just hours after an FIR claiming kidnapping was registered.
Terror has returned to haunt Cuffe Parade. Three months since a three-year-old girl was abducted and found dead in an open plot at Colaba, the body of another child, of about the same age, was on Thursday recovered from the sea, behind Maker towers, just hours after she was reported missing.
A senior doctor at JJ Jospital said the girl, who had suffered injuries on the head, was raped and strangled to death. This is the third such incident in the area in about six months.
While rumours of a serial killer targeting minors have begun doing the rounds, in hushed tones, again, the needle of suspicion has fallen on the girl's family itself.
Two-and-a-half-year-old Angel Sharma lived with her maternal grandmother, Rani Fernandis, at her house in Ambedkar Nagar Colony at Cuffe Parade. Fernandis claims to have gone to sleep, with Angel by her side, at around 12am on Thursday. When she woke up an hour-and-a-half later, she found the child missing. She went to lodge a missing person complaint around 2am , but the police registered an FIR on abduction. Around 8am, a resident of Maker Towers noticed a body floating in the sea and informed the police. The body was identified as Angel's.
The police said Fernandis failed to hear somebody enter the house because she was too drunk when she went to sleep.
Angel's parents, Suzan Sharma, 23, and Rajiv Sharma, who works as a driver with a suburban travel firm, had married in 2008. But, they divorced a year later. Suzan tied the knot again in 2010, this time with Ashok Jadhav, who works as a deliveryman at a restaurant.
For a year now, Suzan and Sharma had been locked in a child custody dispute. "Jadhav was also ready to take care of Angel. Sharma and Suzan had argued about it as recently as April 16," said a police officer.
When the police tried to get in touch with Sharma, he claimed to
be in Uttar Pradesh and that he had left Mumbai on Tuesday. But Angel's family picked holes in his claim. "He told us that he was going to UP, but other people he informed said he was going to Chennai," said Albert Fernandis, Angel's maternal uncle.
The police are now questioning all of Angel's family members, but her maternal grandfather, James Fernandis, has been subjected to intensive interrogation.
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