7-yr-old’s body found in bed box: IAS aspirant used dead rats and perfumes to mask smell, said he was with CBI

delhi Updated: Feb 14, 2018 11:30 IST

From collecting ‘evidence’ to suggesting names of ‘suspects’ who may have kidnapped a seven-year-old missing boy, police said that Avadhesh Sakya worked “intelligently” to keep the needle of suspicion away from him.(HT Photo)

From collecting ‘evidence’ to suggesting names of ‘suspects’ who may have kidnapped a seven-year-old missing boy, police said that Avadhesh Sakya worked “intelligently” to keep the needle of suspicion away from him.

Sakya, 27, was arrested from his home in north Delhi’s Nathupura on Tuesday morning for allegedly killing the boy, Ashish Saini, and hiding his body in a bed box for 37 days.

Aslam Khan, DCP (northwest), attributed the motive of the murder to Sakya’s hatred for the boy’s parents and his desire to extract ransom from them.

The police are also probing Sakya’s relationship with the women in Ashish’s family and if that had anything to do with the murder.

An MSc in Physics and a native of Etah, in Uttar Pradesh, Sakya told police that he had appeared for his civil services examination thrice, clearing the preliminary stage on two occasions. But for Ashish’s family, most locals of nathupura, Sakya was a “senior officer with the Central Bureau of Investigations”.

Brutal neighbours

NOVEMBER 2017: A 30-year-old woman was arrested for kidnapping and killing her neighbour’s minor son after a tiff with them in southwest Delhi’s Uttam Nagar. The woman took the boy to her room, beat him and bashed him against the floor till he died on November 23, 2017. She then wrapped the body in a jute bag. The next day, the boy’s mother became suspicious, searched the woman’s room with locals and found her son’s body.

SEPTEMBER 2017: A man allegedly killed a 6-year-old after keeping him tied up inside the storage box of a bed for a day. The incident took place in southeast Delhi’s Okhla on September 27, 2017. The accused later told the police that he had kept the boy inside the box for around 24-36 hours before strangling him to death.

JUNE 2017: The body of a missing 12-year-old boy was found buried in a 2.5-foot-deep pit inside his neighbour’s house at Shaheed Nagar in Delhi-Ghaziabad border on June 10, 2017. A few days before the incident, the boy had had an altercation with the neighbour’s grandson, when he burst a balloon near the latter’s face.

JULY 2016: A three-year-old boy was murdered and dumped in a tank near Surajmal Vihar metro station on July 27, 2016, by a neighbour, who had abducted him for ransom. The accused was arrested after colony residents reported seeing him take the toddler to his house. He allegedly took the child home by offering him sweets. But before he could call his father to demand ransom, the child started crying. The accused panicked and tried to gag the child, but ended up choking him to death.

“He would sometimes say he works for the intelligence bureau. At other times he said he was with the income tax department. In January, he said he had become a CBI officer and would be taking up the job on February 12. He said he had been given a bungalow, a car and a gun. He spoke fluent English and was educated and confident. We believed him,” said Ashish’s father, Karan Saini.

The “aura” he had created around himself came handy when the police began searching for Ashish, hours after he went missing around 5.30pm on January 7. Ashish had left his uncle’s home around 5.15pm and was captured by a CCTV camera near Sakya’s home at 5.17pm.

“Sakya was very enthusiastic about searching for my child. He helped me register a missing persons case with the police the same day. He said that he knew CBI officers and would get the investigations transferred to the agency. He also promised to get the crime branch and the special cell to trace the boy,” said the boy’s father.

Over the next four weeks, Sakya stayed over at Saini’s home, ate food with them and guided them with the search. He would accompany them when they went to the investigators as well as to the district DCP.

“One day, he brought an empty alcohol bottle, some empty snacks packets and a handkerchief and told us that he lifted them from near a drain and it could have been used by the criminals. He told us not to leave our fingerprints on the items. On another occasion, he said that the kidnapper’s mobile phone signals had been picked up in Jahangirpuri and Bhalaswa. We were grateful to him for his help,” said Ashish’s father.

Meanwhile, the police had been making frequent rounds of the neighbourhood to search for the boy. Residents said the police would search bed boxes, racks and water tanks, but Sakya managed to keep them away from his own rented home.

“Sakya would sit at the doorsteps of his building until the police team left,” said Shalini Rajour, a neighbour. When the boy’s father visited his home around a week ago and found a foul smell inside, Sakya pointed towards a dead rat.

“He immediately sprayed a bottle of perfume and the odour was gone. I did not know that the man we fed and loved was the killer of our boy,” the boy’s father said.

According to the DCP, Sakya had purchased poison to kill rats and would show the dead rodents as the source of the foul smell. She said at least 10 deodorant cans and perfume bottles were recovered from Sakya’s home.

But throughout, Sakya nursed a grudge against the boy’s parents. “He was irritating and a loudmouth. But we never abused him,” said the boy’s father, dismissing Sakya’s allegations of abuse.

According to the DCP, Sakya wanted to buy a SUV car with the ransom he expected to extract from the boy’s family. “Sakya would scold the boy’s parents for spending so much on house construction and would advice them to save a few lakh rupees. He believed he could easily get Rs 15-20 lakh ransom and had even accompanied the boy’s father recently to a car showroom,” said the DCP.