Amidst all the political chaos, a 3-year-old girl child was found dead in a dump yard on Thiruvottiyur-Manali high road in Chennai. However, the police suspect the child’s neighbor to have committed the offense. The neighbor suspect is a woman who allegedly murdered the girl to steal the gold chain and the silver anklet worn by her. According to reports, the ornaments were later sold and the money was taken. The police have taken the suspect and her family in custody.

The girl went missing from her house which was located in the 26th block of the Tsunami Quarters in Ennore. The girl’s mother Kalairani was down with fever and father Palani was out for work. Palani said that she was playing with her 5-year-old brother and few of her neighborhood friends the day she went missing.

Palani, working as a laborer in a factory in Choolai, rushed home on receiving information that his daughter was missing and filed a complaint at the Ennore police station. The next day, the police received information from few ragpickers who found a body of a girl in the Thiruvottiyur dump yard. It was later identified by her parents as their child who went missing the previous day. The corpse of the child went for post-mortem to the Stanley medical hospital. According to reports, the preliminary autopsy reports revealed that the girl’s mouth was gagged and she suffocated and died.

Asked if the girl had suffered any sexual assault, a senior police officer said the medical test report had not been received. This is a second incident where a child has been murdered by a neighbor. Previously, the murder of 7-year-old Hasini shook the entire city. Hasini was sexually assaulted, murdered and burnt by her own neighbor Tashvanth who was a mechanical engineer.

This has left many of us thinking whether neighbors are worth trusting or not. Killing little kids for pleasure and money is not a sign of a good neighborhood in which kids must be brought up. How to identify these merciless humans is becoming a bigger question by the day.