Man held for strangling 8-year-old boy, dumping body in Ghaziabad

The suspect told police that he was in a relationship with the boy’s mother, and did not want the child to come between them

A day after the body of an eight-year-old boy was found dead in Ghaziabad’s Nandgram area on Wednesday, police have arrested a 35-year-old man for allegedly strangulating the boy to death and dumping his body about 7km from his home, said police on Thursday.

The suspect was arrested after a brief shoot-out with the police in Nandgram area of Ghaziabad on Thursday. (HT Photo)

On Tuesday night, when the boy did not return home, his family members approached the local police station to file a missing person report.

“Police found him dead in the Nandgram area, around 7km from his home. Ligature marks were also spotted around his neck,” said a senior police officer.

Following the forensic team investigation and family members’ complaint, a case under sections 103 (murder) and 238 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita was registered at Nandgram police station in Ghaziabad on Wednesday.

Police formed multiple teams and checked CCTV cameras installed in the vicinity of the area. “During investigation, we spotted an adult man with the child in multiple camera footages,” said Rajesh Kumar, deputy commissioner of police, Ghaziabad city.

When the CCTV camera footage was shown to the deceased’s family members, they identified the man as Mahesh Gupta, who hails from Rampur.

He became the prime suspect in the case, and the police team spotted him near the Raj Nagar Extension on Thursday morning. When the team tried to stop him, he fired at police and received a gunshot wound to his leg in the retaliatory fire, said police.

“The suspect revealed that he was in a relationship with the boy’s mother, and whenever he called her on phone to chat, the boy used to make excuses to not hand over the phone to his mother. Enraged by the boy’s behaviour and assuming that the child was a hurdle between them, he called the boy to meet on the pretext of having a cold drink together,” said DCP Kumar. On reaching Nandgram together, he strangled the boy with a rope and dumped his bicycle a few metre away from the spot.

The deceased boy’s bicycle and a countrymade pistol recovered from the spot and further investigation is underway.