Amaravati, Jul 16 (IANS): Nearly 10 days after the horrific gang-rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl by three juveniles in Andhra Pradesh's Nandyal district, the victim’s body remained untraced while police have arrested two relatives of one of the accused for disposing it of.

Police said the father and uncle of one of the minor boys involved in gang-rape and murder have been arrested as they threw the body of the victim in a canal to wipe out the evidence.

Superintendent of Police Adhiraj Singh Rana told media persons that all five accused were sent to judicial custody.

The girl went missing on July 7 while playing at a ground under the limits of Muchumarri police station. While investigating the missing complaint, police zeroed in on the three minors with the help of sniffer dogs. The boys studying in classes 6 and 7 confessed that they gang-raped and killed the girl. Two of the accused are 15 years old, while the third is 12 years old.

The investigations revealed that the accused took the girl to a place near a temple at the Muchumarri Lift Irrigation Project pump house, where they raped and murdered her. One of them told police that they threw the body into the canal. However, due to the misleading statements given by the accused, police questioned them further.

During the subsequent investigations, police found that after the rape and murder, the boys hid the body near the canal. After returning home, one of the boys informed his father and uncle about their crime, and the two went to the place where the boys had hidden the victim’s body. They carried the body to some distance and after tying a boulder to the body, threw it into the canal.

The SP said the search was on for the victim’s body in the canal. Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), expert swimmers, and six special teams are engaged in search operations with the help of the dog squad and drone cameras.