Six-year-old killed by two men in south Delhi to ‘appease deity’

The accused, who have since been arrested, have admitted that they sacrificed the child to please Bhole Baba, their deity, on the sixth day of Navratri that marks the start of Durga Puja, said Chandan Choudhary, deputy commissioner of police, South Delhi

In a shocking incident of human sacrifice in the capital, two men slit the throat of a six-year-old boy in the early hours of Sunday in a slum near the Central Reserve Police Force headquarters in south Delhi’s Lodhi Colony. The child was allegedly sacrificed by the accused to gain the favour of a deity on the sixth day of Navratri, police said.

According to police records, no case of human sacrifice has been reported in the national capital in the last 15 years. (Representative image)

The accused, who have since been arrested, have admitted that they sacrificed the child to please Bhole Baba, their deity, on the sixth day of Navratri that marks the start of Durga Puja, said Chandan Choudhary, deputy commissioner of police, South Delhi.

“On Sunday at around 12.40 am, an information from the CRPF assistant commandant RK Jhangir was received at Lodhi Colony police station that two men have cut the neck of a child at a construction site at the CGO Complex near the CBI building, and both accused were caught by site workers and CRPF personnel,” Choudhary said.

According to police records, no case of human sacrifice has been reported in the national capital in the last 15 years. However, police rescued a four-month-old baby from a cremation ground in Ghaziabad, after her maternal uncle kidnapped her from Nehru Vihar in Delhi on April 17, 2016, and sold her to an occultist for ₹40,000.

Local police reached the spot and found the dead body of the child and grieving parents. There was visible injury on neck and head of the deceased. A knife was found on the scene of the crime, along with clothes of the accused, Choudhary said.

“The crime and forensic teams were called at the spot and the body of the deceased was shifted to the AIIMS Trauma Centre on the statement of deceased’s father, Ashok Kumar, a resident of Girdharpur village in Bareilly district in Uttar Pradesh,” Choudhary said. “A case under sections 302 (culpable homicide amounting to murder) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code has been lodged against both the accused at the Lodhi Colony police station.”

The accused have been identified as Vijay Kumar (23) of Katihar and Amar Kumar (21) of Saharsa, both in Bihar. “Both of them were working at the site as cement cutters and used to smoke ganja and smack regularly. When they were caught, they were disoriented because of that,” she said. “One of the accused said that he had a vision that Bhole Baba wants them to slit the throat of a child.”

The victim was known to the accused, police said. “The complainant has stated that the ladies of the labourers’ families were singing bhajan at the construction site after dinner on Saturday. He further said that after the bhajan, when they were supposed to go their respective jhuggis (shanties), he realised that his son was missing. He started searching him in other jhuggis and was suspicious on seeing blood oozing from the jhuggi of the accused. He then pushed the door of accused’s jhuggi and found his son dead,” Choudhary said.

The victim’s father raise an alarm and his neighbours apprehended both the accused persons. “The accused persons, in their disclosure statement, had admitted to have consumed ganja before committing the crime. Accused Vijay have stated in his disclosure that after consuming prasad of Lord Shiva (ganja), he went to the place where the ladies were singing and asked for agarbatti to perform puja of Lord Shiva. When the ladies denied to give him the agarbatti, he came back to his jhuggi and had an illusion that Lord Shiva is asking for sacrifice of a child,” the police officer said.

“To propitiate the deity, he took the child from his father’s jhuggi and murdered him by cutting his throat. The police have recovered the knife used in the crime from the spot,” she said, adding that an autopsy is being conducted at the AIIMS Trauma Centre.

The parents of the victim said both the accused often said miracles can happen if anyone sacrifices some live creatures to Bhole Baba and goddess Durga. “None of the workers paid any attention to their nonsense, as they used to be under the influence of ganja and bhang all the time,” said the father of the victim. “I have never ever imagined that one day these drug addicts will kill my child.”