A neighbour of Australian-born six-year- old Mehram Sandhu was convicted by a local court for his murder, here on Saturday. Mehram’s body was found decomposed in Sector 69 here on November 7, 2014. The court would pronounce the quantum of sentence on February 24 against the convict, Tejinder Singh alias Ganju (28), who has been held guilty of kidnapping and killing the child for extortion.
The child had gone missing from outside his house on October 28, 2014. Initially the police, on a complaint by Mehram’s maternal grandfather Balwinder Singh, a resident of Phase 9, had booked the child’s father, Varinder Pal Singh, a resident of Australia, and other relatives. The child was living with his mother in Mohali after his parents separated. Mehram had been born on December 5, 2008, in Sydney. Six months after his birth, his mother had come back to India along with him and had been staying with her parents.
On November 19, several days after the body was found, the police arrested Ganju, who worked as a driver-on-call without any regular job at the time. He was charged under sections 364A (kidnapping for ransom), 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder), 302 (murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
He was charged with having murdered the child by strangling him with a piece of cloth within two hours of his kidnapping from a park near the victim’s house at Phase 9 on October 28 evening.
{{/usCountry}}He was charged with having murdered the child by strangling him with a piece of cloth within two hours of his kidnapping from a park near the victim’s house at Phase 9 on October 28 evening.
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