NEW DELHI: A 17-year-old boy and his 12-year-old friend strangled to death a 10-year-old boy known to them, in northeast Delhi’s Khajuri Khas area on Friday. The accused killed the boy after they failed to kidnap him to demand extortion money from his father.
The boy’s body was hidden on the second floor of a mosque in the area.
On Thursday, Shamim Hussain, a resident of Shri Ram Colony near Khajuri Khas, reported to police that his son Farhan had gone to Madina Masjid in C Block of their residential area on Thursday but didn’t return home. On this, a missing complaint was lodged by the police on the father’s statement and efforts to trace the boy were made.
Deputy commissioner of police (northeast) Ved Prakash Surya said, a joint search was conducted by the cops and the parents of the missing child in the nearby areas of their house. “Information regarding the missing child was communicated to all adjoining police stations of Delhi-NCR and several local residents, friends, relatives of the missing child were examined but no clue was found,” Surya said.
The DCP said CCTV footage was also scanned and searches were conducted at every floor of Madina Masjid, wherein the missing child was last seen. During the search operation, the body of a boy was found buried under debris in a corner. The body was shown to the child’s parents who identified him as their son. A case of murder was registered and the boy’s body was sent for postmortem.
Further probe revealed that Farhan was last spotted with his two friends, both of them juveniles. “Both the juveniles were called for examination and were questioned. Contradictions were noticed in their versions and when confronted with facts, they broke down and confessed to have killed the boy,” the DCP said.
The two boys then told the cops that they wanted to extort money from the deceased’s father by kidnapping the minor. They planned it some days ago and even gave Farhan water laced with sleeping pills recently but it did not work. In a second attempt on Thursday, they took Farhan to Madina Masjid on the pretext of eating momos and strangled him there. Seeing the child dead, they panicked and hid his body under some debris that was dumped on the second floor of the mosque, before fleeing, police said.