WHAT nine-year-old Preeshena Varshiny endured could only have been plotted by a sick and twisted mind.
Preeshena was not in vulnerable surroundings, but safe in the comfort of her home at a gated and well-guarded condominium at Bukit Idaman in Selayang, Selangor.
However, she was home alone after her parents left for work on Nov 1, 2007.
The routine had only begun weeks earlier after her mother, who was a housewife, decided to get a job.
With her older brother away at school and her younger sister with a babysitter, Preeshena was left by herself until her parents returned home.
All was well over the first few weeks, but on that fateful day, her father received devastating news when a call from a guard at the condominium came in at about 4pm.
He was told his daughter had fallen from their apartment unit on the ninth floor and her bloodied body was found sprawled on the ground floor.
The marketing manager rushed home.
The case was initially classified a mishap as there were no signs of forced entry at the apartment.
Preeshena was thought to have fallen from the balcony of her home, until autopsy results revealed otherwise.
The Year Three student of SK Saint Mary in Selayang had been raped, sodomised and beaten.
Her body was badly bruised and she suffered broken limbs.
Police reclassified the case as murder and investigations revealed she had been abducted from her apartment and taken to a vacant unit on the second floor, where she was sexually assaulted before being thrown off a balcony.
The only clue that Preeshena was targeted by her assailant was that a day earlier, she had contacted her father in the afternoon and told him someone was banging on their main door.
Her father told her to ignore the person and remain in the apartment unit.
He returned home later that day and all was fine.
It is believed her assailant could have returned again the next day and convinced the unsuspecting child to open the door.
The girl is believed to have let her attacker in despite her father’s advice a day earlier.
Although there were several foreigners working at retail stores at the condominium who were arrested for investigations, they were released after DNA tests with traces taken from the victim’s body did not show a match.
The case remains unsolved until today.
Preeshena’s murder was a blow to the nation at a time when it was still reeling in shock over the widely-reported abduction and murder of eight-year-old Nurin Jazlin Jazimin.
Nurin was abducted, raped and murdered less than three months earlier at a night market next to her home in Setapak on Aug 20, 2007.
Her body was found almost a month later in a bag that was dumped at a shophouse off Old Klang Road in Kuala Lumpur.
Just like the case of Preeshena, Nurin’s killer remains at large.
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