A teenage boy has been apprehended for allegedly kidnapping and killing his six-year-old nephew in Uttar Pradesh's Maharajganj district, police said on Sunday. Piyush, son of Deepak Gupta, resident of Banspar village was kidnapped for Rs 50 lakh ransom on December 9, police said.
Police launched a probe after registering a case and the needle of suspicion pointed at a 14-year-old boy, the uncle of Piyush. He told police that he killed the boy on the day he kidnapped him, hid the body and later buried it in a farm field.
The body was recovered from the field on Saturday evening, said Maharajganj SP Pradeep Gupta. "It had become clear that someone from the family was involved and during interrogation, a teenage boy, who is the uncle of the boy, confessed to his role in not only kidnapping and killing him, but also writing a letter demanding Rs 50 lakh ransom from his family," the SP said.
His handwriting matched with the letter, the police official said. The accused told police that the parents of Piyush used to call him a thief and they would scold him up whenever he complained to them against the boy.
The teenager has been sent to a juvenile shelter home, police said. Enraged over the kidnap-cum-murder incident, villagers in Banspar blocked the Farenda-Gorakhpur highway on Sunday morning and demanded that they be allowed to raise the issue with the chief minister.
Police pacified the villagers and got the road cleared.