Man who kidnapped and killed child arrested in Surat

According to the police, the child, identified as Ansh Ansari, and his mother, were sleeping outside his grandmother’s shanty in Iraniwadi in Kandivali West when around 2am, a man on a bicycle picked him up and carried him away.

MUMBAI: The Kandivali police on Tuesday arrested a man in Surat for allegedly kidnapping and murdering the four-year-old son of a pavement dweller from Kandivali on Saturday.

(Shutterstock)

According to the police, the child, identified as Ansh Ansari, and his mother, were sleeping outside his grandmother’s shanty in Iraniwadi in Kandivali West when around 2am, a man on a bicycle carried him away. The accused killed the child and brought his body back on the bicycle around 45 minutes later and abandoned it on the street near the shanty.

The boy’s mother woke up later to find her son lying motionless on the street and rushed him to a hospital, where he was declared “brought dead”. She then approached the Kandivali police, where a murder case was registered against an “unidentified accused”.

Police launched an investigation and after scanning CCTV footage of the area, discovered that a man known to the family, identified as Akshay Ashok Garud (25), was the culprit. He used to work with the victim’s father and resided at Valnai Vasahat Colony in Gautam Buddha Marg, Malad West. The couple told police that the accused used to often take the child out.

The police formed six teams to trace the accused. After scanning through recordings of over 200 CCTV cameras from Goregaon to Dahisar, they found out that the accused had fled from the city. “Through informers, we came to know that Garud was in Surat in Gujarat,” said an officer from Kandivali police station.