8-year-old kidnapped, sodomised, killed

The accused, who has been arrested from South Delhi, tried to disfigure the victim's face to avoid identification

8-year-old kidnapped, sodomised, killed

The accused, who has been arrested from South Delhi, tried to disfigure the victim's face to avoid identification

Family members of eight-year-old Kaku (name changed) are grieving his loss. But they are more shocked at the gruesome manner in which the young boy was killed by a family acquaintance.

The primary student of an MCD school was allegedly kidnapped, sodomised and then stoned to death by a 21-year-old man. The accused also tried to disfigure the body in a bid to avoid identification. But he was caught by the police 27 days after the incident. The matter has been reported from Samaipur Badli area of outer Delhi.

A senior police official said that Dharam Pal, the accused, was arrested by them on Sunday night. The victim, Kaku (name changed) lived in Sector 18 in Rohini along with his parents and his 10-year-old elder brother. He went missing on March 15 and his body was found from a nearby railway track two days later.

'Where's my son?'u00a0
"Sanjay Thakur, Kaku's father, who runs a grocery shop in the area, came to a police station on March 16 to report the boy's disappearance. Police registered an FIR on Sanjay's complainant. Next day we got a call that the body of a young boy has been discovered at a railway track. The deceased was identified as Kaku by Sanjay Thakur. Police changed the IPC sections in FIRs as the boy was murdered after being sodomised and his body was disfigured by the accused," said the police official.

The officer said that they added sections 364 (kidnap for murder), 377 (sodomy), 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender) in the FIR and started investigations. Several teams were roped in seeing the gravity of the crime.

The trail
During the probe police came to know that the deceased was seen with Dharam Pal before he went missing. Dharam Pal had been acquainted with the boy's family members for five years as he had lived in the neighbourhood. A few months earlier he had left the place and was living in Mahipalpur area where he was working with a private firm.

"Dharam Pal had become a suspect in the eyes of police as he too had gone missing after the incident. Police conducted several raids at his homes in south Delhi and in Bihar but he had been able to evade the cops. Police said that he had been in the Capital all the time as he had no money to leave the city. On April 10 police received a tip-off that he would come to meet his employers to get some money in order to go out of station. He was nabbed by cops," said the police official.

During the course of investigation Dharam Pal broke down and confessed to kidnapping and murdering the boy. He said that on March 15 he went to meet Sanjay Thakur in the evening. At around 8 pm when he was returning Mahipal Pur he found Kaku alone and on the pretext of giving him some eatable he took him to nearby railway station where he sodomized him.

"Dharam Pal stoned the boy to death after he started crying. Dharam Pal was apprehensive that Kaku could reveal to the police that he had been sodomised. He smashed the victim's face so he could not be identified," said the police official.

Man raped daughter
A middle-aged man was arrested in the Capital on March 24 for allegedly raping his 13-year-old daughter for the past three years. The girl, a resident of Jakhira in north Delhi, claimed that her father would rape her under the influence of alcohol. A Class VIII student in a government school, the girl said she had even contemplated running away from the house to escape suffering at the hands of her father. Based on the girl's statement, her father Tej Bahadur was arrested on Tuesday. A case of rape has been registered at the Sarai Rohilla police station in this connection.