The 30-year-old man arrested on Tuesday for allegedly raping three minors in east Delhi used the laptop gifted by his mother to watch child pornography instead of finishing his schooling by correspondence, the police said on Thursday.

Suspected paedophile Manish Chaddha is accused of raping a seven-year-old girl on the terrace of a house in Madhu Vihar on Monday. He allegedly confessed to sexually assaulting two girls, both below the age of 10 years, in Ghazipur on December 20 and January 17. He was finally caught after he was forced to abandon his scooty in Madhu Vihar while being chased by locals.

Class VIII dropout

Manish’s laptop and mobile phone, both seized from his home, have pornographic videos, contact numbers of sex workers and drug suppliers, the police said. The Class VIII dropout told the police that he was unemployed and received “very little pocket money” from his mother, which was “insufficient to fulfil my needs for drugs and sex”.

The accused would get drunk and then go trawling through slums on his scooty to hunt for minors, an officer said, adding, “We are yet to determine his involvement in other similar cases. He would to fight with his mother for more money and often get drunk during the day.”

A relative who stays in the same building in Shakarpur said: “Manish was rusticated from school in Class VIII because of his behaviour. He never took admission in a school after that. His mother recently enrolled in him in Open School so that he could complete his schooling and even got him a laptop.”

The scooty too was a gift from his mother to help him finish his schooling.

A retired teacher from a private school in Ghaziabad, she stayed with Manish in Shakarpur. Since the family did not have any other source of income, they had rented out a portion of the same flat.

Manish told the police that he would call sex workers to the flat as soon as his mother would leave for work. The man also placed bets online and lost a lot of money. “We barely saw him interact with anyone. He only stepped out to go somewhere on his scooty. We have never imagined that he was raping girls,” said a neighbour.

They told the police that Manish’s parents separated when he was little.

“He grew up in his maternal grandparents’ house in Ghaziabad, where his mother started working in a private school,” they said.

Family members said Manish’s father died in 2013, after which his mother returned to their Shakarpur house to claim her share of the property.

“We stopped interacting with Manish and even stopped our children from interacting with him because of his bad habits. Manish often stared at his cousins, making them feel uncomfortable. He was also not invited to any family functions,” the relative added.