Police arrested a 27-year-old man in connection to the rape and murder of 10-year-old Shriya Sunar of Pumdibhumdi in Pokhara-22 on Tuesday.

Earlier, the police had arrested five people in connection to the case and of them Kusum Poudel, the victim’s neighbour, confessed to committing the crime. Poudel, in his confession statement, has said that he tortured the victim, raped and killed the victim under the influence of alcohol and marijuana after the girl did not heed to his demands.

Sunar, a grade 3 student of Shree Lila Basic School, had gone to buy a packet of biscuits from her maternal home where she was staying on Monday at around 5:30pm, when inebriated Poudel abducted her and raped and murdered her. The victim’s body was found some 50 metres away from her maternal home in the bushes with head injuries and cut wounds all over her body.

However, the District Police Office, Kaski will officially inform about the case during a press meet scheduled to take place Wednesday afternoon.

The police, after finding the body of the victim yesterday morning, had deployed sniffer dogs to find the perpetrator. The sniffer dogs stopped after moving 100 metres from Sunar’s maternal home, near the house of Poudel.

A report of the post-mortem of the victim conducted at Pokhara Institute of Health Sciences shows that the victim was raped and died due to serious injury to her head.