Kochi: A ‘guest worker’ in Kerala currently in police custody for alleged sexual assault and murder of a five-year-old girl on Friday –, was arrested in Delhi’s Ghazipur on charges for raping a 10-year-old girl in 2018, police said on Tuesday.
Ashfaq Alam, who hails from Bihar, was undergoing imprisonment in a Delhi jail for a month when he came out on bail and had been missing since then.
“We learnt from the National Crime Records Bureau finger print department that Alam was in jail and after securing bail, he went missing,” said a top police official who is heading the present probe against him.
The gruesome murder took place on Friday and the body of the five-year-old girl was recovered on Saturday from a market near here. The following day, the accused was arrested by the local police.
On Tuesday, three people at an identification parade identified Alam. The three were — a trade union worker in the Aluva market, the bus conductor and a woman in the bus in which Alam and the girl had travelled.
The five-year-old is the eldest among the four children of a Bihar family who was working in Kerala. Alam was their neighbour.
Approximately there are around 1.6 million migrant workers from North India across Kerala. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had coined the term ‘guest worker’ for them, most of whom are engaged in manual labour.
Of late, there have been numerous instances of these workers engaging in criminal activities, including cold blooded murders.
The Congress-led opposition has blamed the Vijayan government for not ensuring proper registration of these guest workers, even when the authorities often claim that they are doing the registration activities.
Follow on Twitter | Posted by Neha Khan | 
