Eight-year-old Ramisa Akter was raped by her neighbour before he murdered and beheaded her in Dhaka’s Pallabi yesterday, police said after primary interrogation.

Sub-inspector Ohiduzzaman of Pallabi Police Station told The Daily Star that the main accused, Sohel Rana, 31, admitted during interrogation that he had raped the child before the murder.

Sohel, his wife Swapana Akter, and an unidentified person were made accused in a case filed with Pallabi Police Station by the victim’s father, Abdul Hannan Mollah.

Police produced the two accused before a Dhaka court, and court sources said Sohel agreed to give a confessional statement before a magistrate. The unidentified accused is on the run.

In the case statement, Hannan alleged that Sohel took his daughter, a second grader at Popular Model High School, to his room and raped her. He later beheaded her, intending to conceal his crime by dismembering the body. But Ramisa’s screams had caught the attention of her mother.

Sohel hid Ramisa’s body under his bed as her family members and neighbours began banging on his door. Her severed head was found in a bucket in the toilet.

The body was handed over to family today after an autopsy at Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital.

Sohel went into hiding after the incident but was detained from Narayanganj’s Fatullah around 7:00pm yesterday.