The Hindu : Front Page : Mystery shrouds death of eight-year-old boy

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Mystery shrouds death of eight-year-old boy

Staff Reporter

PHOTO: SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA

MURDERED: Eight-year-old Sanjeev.

NEW DELHI: Discovery of an eight-year-old boy’s charred body in a field under highly mysterious circumstances has sent shock waves across Alipur village on the outskirts of Delhi.

Tension gripped the area following the recovery of the body late on Thursday night and a mob armed with torches and sticks attacked a marriage party in neighbouring Sungarpur village well past midnight suspecting their involvement in the gruesome murder. Four members of the marriage party sustained injuries in the attack. The police had to be rushed to the spot to bring the situation under control.

The bizarre murder came to light around 11 p.m. when the family of little Sanjeev, who had gone missing earlier in the evening, noticed smoke emanating from a heap of cattle fodder in the fields. On closer examination they found to their horror the half-burnt body of a little boy in the pile.

“We were returning home after an unsuccessful search for the boy in the neighbourhood when we saw a fire burning in the fields. We rushed to douse the flames and noticed a body lying in the heap. It was later identified as that of Sanjeev. Since some members of a marriage party in the neighbouring village had returned home even before the ceremony got over, it sparked suspicion that the boy might have been beaten up and burnt alive by them following an altercation. It led to an attack on the marriage party by some angry villagers,” said the victim’s paternal uncle, Jai Singh Kaliraman of Bakhtawarpur.

Rumours were rife in the village all day long on Friday that Sanjeev who had set out on his bicycle was involved in an accident with a vehicle belonging to the marriage party and that the occupants, some of whom were drunk, beat up the boy and then set him afire in the fields as he had demanded compensation for the damaged bicycle. Curiously the bicycle is yet to be traced.

Defending the members of the marriage party, Prahalad Singh, a close relative of the bride, said: “It is highly improbable that an outsider would have dared to beat up and then burn a young boy alive when there is always heavy traffic on the road connecting the two villages. Also, there seems no eyewitness to the incident. It seems to be the handiwork of some locals. The boy was probably killed elsewhere and then the body was burnt in the fields.”

Giving a clean chit to the marriage party, a senior police officer said it could be a case of personal enmity. “Some members of the marriage party were detained following the incident and their interrogation has established that they were not connected to the murder. The case is being looked into from all possible angles. Since the victim was the only son of the family which owns vast farm land, the murder could be related to a property dispute or personal enmity. It is also possible that the boy was first sodomised by some locals and then killed for fear of being identified.” The body of the boy, a Class II student of Rishikul Vidyapeeth, was handed over to the family on Friday after post-mortem. The last rites were performed in the village in the evening, but the mystery persisted.

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