School belt helps Delhi police find man who slit the throats of 8-year-old boy, mother

Police said that the accused, Babloo Kumar Mondal, slit the woman’s throat and repeatedly stabbed her to ensure she died. He did not spare the sleeping child either, allegedly killing him in the same way.

The buckle on a belt, which bore the name of the school an eight-year-old boy attended, helped police catch a man who allegedly killed him and his mother at their home in south Delhi’s Okhla last week.

Babloo Kumar Mondal allegedly killed his live-in partner and her son on April 23, police said. (HT Photo)

Babloo Kumar Mondal, 29, had allegedly planned the murder days before he slit the throats of the mother-son duo on April 23. “The woman was killed with the same long knife the killer had made her buy days earlier,” said Chinmoy Biswal, deputy commissioner of police (south-east).

Widowed seven years ago, the woman, Sabitri Ghosh, and her son lived in Okhla Phase-2. Around mid last year, Mondal had moved in with her as a live-in partner. They were an “introvert” couple and neighbours believed they were married, said the DCP.

“But for the past few months, Mondal had begun suspecting Ghosh of speaking to other men and would openly fight,” said the DCP.

Mondal, an auto driver, met with an accident early this year, leaving him a limp in his leg. “He had taken up another job, but had turned insecure. He began to feel Ghosh would dump him because of the physical problem,” said Biswal.

He then fled to his home in West Bengal’s Malda district. The decomposed bodies were found by the police two days later on April 25 after neighbours complained of foul smell.

“Since the man was missing, he became the prime suspect. But we neither had his real name or address, nor his picture,” said the DCP.

The police came across the school belt of the murdered boy. It had the name of the school on the buckle. Investigators visited the school for any possible details of the suspect.

“We checked the boy’s admission form for clues. The suspect had pasted his own photo in place of the boy’s real father. Once we had the photograph, we knew whom to trace,” said the DCP.

Police learnt the man had fled to Malda but wasn’t using his own mobile phones, making it difficult to trace him. “He would call his people by borrowing phones of strangers. There were occasions when we ended up chasing the mobile phone owners before realising we were tricked,” said an investigator. Mondal was finally nabbed in Sahibganj in Jharkhand on Wednesday. The knife allegedly used in the murders was recovered from him.