In a horrific incident, a 5-year-old girl was raped and bludgeoned to death in Hyderabad, before she was dumped in the bushes on Wednesday.

The police have arrested a 23-year-old who lived in the neighbourhood for the crime.

The police identified the accused as Dinesh D, a construction worker from Madhya Pradesh, and said he had allegedly lured the girl with chocolates and took her to an isolated spot in Hyderabad's Alkapuri area and raped her before smashing her head with a boulder.

The accused, identified as Dinesh D, a construction labourer from Madhya Pradesh, had allegedly lured the girl with chocolate, before taking her to an isolated spot, where he committed the heinous crime.

According to reports, the girl’s parents knew the accused, and they had seen him taking her to the shop to buy chocolates. They were all residents of the Aryamitra labour camp in Alkapur township.

They confronted him in the evening, and began searching for her, when he claimed that he had dropped the girl back hours ago. The Times of India reported that the accused even joined the search, until the police detained him, where he confessed that he had killed the girl as he was afraid that she would speak.

"He took her to a deserted place in Alkapuri area where he allegedly raped and killed her using a boulder. The girl's parents lodged a complaint last night and during the course of the investigation, police cracked the case and found the girl's body in bushes, and subsequently arrested the accused (around midnight)," Narsingi Police Station Inspector GV Ramana Goud told PTI.

Deccan Chronicle reported that the body was found near the compound wall of the Sri Shirdi Sai Prem Samaj Hospital in Narsingi, and later shifted to the Osmania Hospital for a postmortem. 

Dinesh was booked under Sections 366 (kidnapping or abduction) 376A (rape) and 302 (murder) of the IPC besides other relevant sections of the POCSO Act.