Delhi: Boy’s body found in nursery, cops say he was strangulated

The boy lived with his parents and an elder sister in Harsh Vihar. His father is a contractor and his mother runs a grocery store near their house.

A seven-year-old boy’s body was found at a nursery on Saturday morning, hours after he was reported missing from his neighbourhood in east Delhi’s Harsh Vihar.

The boy lived with his parents and an elder sister in Harsh Vihar. His father is a contractor and his mother runs a grocery store near their house. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Strangulation marks on the boy’s neck suggested he was murdered, said AK Singla, DCP (north-east). However, no breakthrough was made in the case when this report was filed.

The boy lived with his parents and an elder sister in Harsh Vihar. His father is a contractor and his mother runs a grocery store near their house.

On Friday evening, the boy’s father had left home to visit a nearby clinic where he needed to get a fresh bandage for a recent injury.

Before leaving, he switched on the television and put on a cartoon channel for his children to watch. The boy’s mother was at her grocery store.

Around 7 pm, the boy walked out of his home, informing his sister that he was going out to a nearby tea stall. But neither did he reach the tea stall nor returned home.

“His parents searched for him in the neighbourhood before approaching us. We registered a missing complaint and formed a team to search for the boy,” said the DCP.

The boy’s body was found the next morning inside a nursery, not far from his house, around 6 am. “The nursery owner had opened his establishment and was walking along the plants when he noticed the body,” said the DCP.

The owner informed the police.

Police said there were strangulation marks on the boy’s neck, suggesting it was a murder. His clothes were intact. The police said they will wait for the autopsy report before ruling out sexual abuse.

Among other possibilities, investigators said, they are probing if the parents had any enmity with anyone in the locality. A case of kidnapping and murder has been registered at the Harsh Vihar police station.