Teen who murdered 10-year-old in Mumbai was inspired by crime shows on TV

On Saturday afternoon, Mumbai’s Sakinaka police found the dead body of a 10-year-old boy in a nullah at Andheri Kurla Road. According to police, the boy was strangled to death and may have been sexually assaulted by a 15-year-old boy who was his neighbour in Sakinaka.

The accused has been charged with murder and a post-mortem is being conducted. “During questioning, he told us that he got the idea of covering up the incident from crime shows,” said inspector Sunil Mane of Sakinaka police station.

Navinchandra Reddy, deputy commissioner of police, zone 10, said that a case of murder has been registered against the 15-year-old minor and he is being interrogated further in the presence of his parents.

The 10-year-old was last seen on Thursday evening and that night, at 10.30pm, his parents received a ransom call which demanded Rs 5 lakh for the missing boy. The father, a shop owner, filed a kidnapping complaint with the police.

The police traced the call back to a teenaged boy in the same locality who used his mother’s phone to make the ransom call. This teenager told the police that he had called at the behest of his friend, the 15-year-old whom the police would later charge with murder.

Initial investigations suggest the 15-year-old tried to sexually assault the 10-year-old on Thursday evening.

When he resisted, the 15-year-old strangled the younger boy to death. He then put the dead body in a suitcase, borrowed an acquaintance’s two-wheeler and dumped the suitcase in a nullah at Andheri Kurla Road. “We suspect that the minor found in conflict with the law tried to sexually exploit the deceased, which led to a fight eventually leading to the death of the 10-year-old,” said a police officer.

According to the police, the 15-year-old then told his friend about the murder and asked him to make the ransom call to make it seem as though the 10-year-old had been kidnapped.

First Published: Dec 23, 2018 09:50 IST