A three-year-old girl playing near her home in a Nashik village was allegedly raped and killed by a local construction worker who lured her with chocolate, shattering her family’s world in mere hours.
 The girl was frolicking in an open area while her mother and grandfather were inside. When other children headed home, she vanished. Her family searched for over an hour before alerting police at 7 PM. Playmates revealed the accused—a village resident working at a nearby site—had enticed her away with chocolate. Officers zeroed in his house, scouring bushes near a mobile tower where they found her body.
Questioned about his movements that evening, the suspect confessed. He was arrested and remanded to custody until November 20. The child’s body was sent for postmortem and later handed to grieving relatives, who demanded the harshest punishment. Her father said: “We want him hanged in front of the villagers—to deter others from such monstrosity.”
