Angry at being scolded by neighbours, Delhi man kills their 11-year-old son

The 28-year-old suspect led the police to the decomposed body under the Khajuri Khas flyover after CCTV footage showed him walking with the boy around the same time that he had gone missing, said police.

A 11-year-old boy who was reported missing two weeks ago was murdered by his neighbour because the man was angry at being scolded by the child’s parents, police said on Sunday.

A 11-year-old boy who was reported missing two weeks ago was murdered by his neighbour because the man was angry at being scolded by the child’s parents, police said on Sunday.

The 28-year-old suspect, Danish, led the police to the decomposed body under the Khajuri Khas flyover after CCTV footage showed him walking with the boy around the same time that he had gone missing, said Atul Kumar, deputy commissioner of police (north-east).

The DCP, however, said they were still questioning the suspect to know whether there was any other motive behind the crime or if the boy had been sexually assaulted. “For now, we only have Danish’s version of the events. We will know more once we receive the autopsy report,” said the DCP.

Identified by the police only by his first name, Danish earned his living by selling chicken. He lived in the same neighbourhood as the boy in north-east Delhi’s Nehru Vihar. Until recently, he shared a friendly relationship with the boy who lived with his parents. The boy’s parents are daily wage labourers. “Danish had also gifted the boy a few chicks to rear. They would often spend time together,” said the DCP.

But for the past few days, he was being repeatedly scolded by the boy’s parents. “Danish would sit outside the home of the boy whose parents believed that he was blocking the narrow street,” said the officer based on Danish’s “confession”. “Danish was angry. Finally he decided that killing the boy would leave his family in pain.”

On May 14, Danish allegedly took the boy along with him to an isolated spot under the Khajuri Khas flyover, almost four kilometres from their own neighbourhood. “The boy would often go out with him, so it wasn’t difficult to lure him away. They walked to the spot,” said the officer.

Danish then strangled the boy and dumped his body in a “cavity” in the ground under the flyover even as the child’s family got a missing case registered at Khajuri Khas police station.

“Our investigators scanned many hours of videos and saw thousands of people before the CCTV camera installed outside a shop showed the boy in Danish’s company. We picked up Danish on Saturday and confronted him with the footage. He couldn’t explain the boy’s disappearance and confessed,” said the officer.

Thereafter, Danish led the police team to the body, said the DCP.

“Though Danish told us that he had strangled the boy, we would be able to confirm that only after the autopsy because the body was in a highly decomposed condition,” said the DCP.