A man suspected in the midday rape of a 9-year-old girl in Oddar Meanchey province in December was arrested on Sunday morning after police tracked him down on the other side of the country, in Kratie province.
The girl had been walking to school in Anlong Veng district on December 22 when a man on a motorbike dragged her into a nearby forest and raped her. The bleeding girl walked the 500 meters to her home where her parents alerted the police and took her to the district referral hospital.
The only evidence police found at the scene was an abandoned motorbike that had its engine serial number defaced, which police said would make the investigation “more difficult.”
“However, we won’t stop looking until we find who did this, to ensure it doesn’t happen again in the future,” district military police commander Nguon Thirith said in December.
Peng Sinoy, the 23-year-old suspect, was arrested in Kratie province, some 300 km away from the location of the crime, Anlong Veng district penal police chief Tet Sothea said on Sunday.
“Police arrested the suspect on Saturday at 9 a.m. when he was sitting while having his motorbike washed in a village,” he said.
He did not know exactly where the arrest took place in Kratie and was unable to explain how police had tracked down the suspect.
Deputy Oddar Meanchey police chief Suy Seng also could not provide any information on how the suspect had been identified and arrested, other than to add that police in both provinces had “cooperated.”
He said that Mr. Sinoy was currently being detained at the Oddar Meanchey provincial police headquarters, and would be sent to court for questioning today.
In a separate case in Anlong Veng district, 29-year-old rice farmer Sieng Savuth was arrested last week for raping his 9-year-old stepdaughter in the forest near his house.
