Bathinda, Dec. 7 -- A 45-year-old Muktsar man who served 16 years in jail for raping and murdering a minor has been arrested in a fresh case of similar brutality, this time involving a nine-year-old girl, police said on Saturday.

The child, who lived with her migrant parents near the grain market in Muktsar town, had gone missing on December 4 under suspicious circumstances.

Police were alerted the next day and an operation to trace her was immediately launched, but in vain.

On Saturday afternoon, nearly 48 hours after her disappearance, the child's body was recovered from near a rice mill, less than a kilometre from her residence.

Cracking the case within hours, police arrested the accused, Mukesh Kumar, 45, following an encounter. ...