‘Couldn’t raise one more girl’: Man kills 10-month-old daughter, dumps body in septic tank in Delhi's Mukundpur

Police said the accused initially tried to cover up the crime by reporting the infant as kidnapped.

A 29-year-old man was arrested on Monday for allegedly killing his 10-month-old daughter and dumping her body in a septic tank outside his house in outer north Delhi’s Mukundpur area, police said. Investigators said the man told them he was under severe financial stress, did not want the burden of raising a second daughter, and was struggling with the child’s recurring illness and medical expenses.

According to police, the child’s body was recovered from a septic tank outside the family’s house. (Sanjeev Verma/ HT)

Police said the accused initially tried to cover up the crime by reporting the infant as kidnapped.

Deputy commissioner of police (outer north) Hareshwar Swami identified the accused as Deepak Kumar, a school van driver employed at a private school in Model Town.

According to police, the child’s body was recovered from a septic tank outside the family’s house in Bhalswa Dairy after Deepak allegedly confessed during questioning.

Swami said Bhalswa Dairy police station received a PCR call on May 24 regarding the alleged abduction of a 10-month-old girl from Mukundpur Part-2. “Given the age of the child, senior officers rushed to the spot and launched an extensive search operation in the locality,” he said.

Police initially registered a case under Section 137(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), pertaining to kidnapping.

In his complaint, Deepak claimed that his daughter “disappeared from her bed while he stepped out for five minutes to buy biscuits from a nearby shop”.

However, investigators soon found inconsistencies in his account. “Teams scanned CCTV footage from lanes and possible escape routes around the neighbourhood but found no evidence supporting the father’s version of events or movement matching the alleged timeline,” an investigator said.

A senior police officer said Deepak was subsequently questioned in detail and confronted with the discrepancies in his statement.

“During sustained interrogation, the accused broke down and confessed that he had killed the child and disposed of the body in the septic tank,” the officer said.

Police added that, according to the accused’s statement, he threw the child into the tank while she was still alive. The postmortem examination is awaited to ascertain the exact cause of death.

Police said the accused told investigators that mounting financial difficulties and the responsibility of raising another daughter pushed him to commit the crime. “He also said the child remained unwell frequently and he was unable to bear the cost of her treatment,” the officer said.

Acting on his disclosure, police recovered the infant’s body from the septic tank outside the residence. Following the recovery, Section 103(1) of the BNS, pertaining to murder, was added to the FIR, and the accused was formally arrested.

Police said Deepak, a resident of Mukundpur in the Bhalswa Dairy area, studied till Class 12 and had been working as a school van driver for several years. Further investigation is underway.