Facebook friend kills 7-year-old son of woman he was trying to win over

The victim’s mother Nirupama had befriended Debashis Panda on Facebook a year ago. He wanted to win over the woman and saw the boy as an ‘obstacle’

In a case of a Facebook friendship gone wrong, a woman in Odisha’s Ganjam district lost her son after a man she befriended on the social networking site killed the 7-year-old as he saw him as an ‘obstacle’.

A 7-year-old boy was killed by his mother’s Facebook friend in Odisha’s Ganjam district. (Photo only for representation)

The police in Ganjam district arrested Debashis Panda on wednesday for allegedly abducting and killing the 7-year-old boy. The victim’s mother Nirupama had befriended Panda on Facebook a year ago, said sub-divisional police officer of Berhampur, Bishnu Pati.

“He used to visit her house frequently and she had introduced him as her ‘brother’ to everyone. But Panda was attracted towards Nirupama and wanted to establish a physical relationship with her. However, the woman had declined his advances. The man felt that the boy was an obstacle in their relationship as he always seemed to be around the woman and thus he wanted to kill the boy,” said Pati.

On January 12, a week after the boy’s 7th birthday, Panda took the boy to drop him off to school. But he instead took him to the Tara Tarini forest in Purushottampur where he stoned the child to death before fleeing to Sambalpur to a friend’s place.

After Nirupama lodged an FIR, police recovered the boy’s blood-stained ID-Card and school uniform from Panda’s possession and arrested him from Sambalpur.