GREATER NOIDA: The three-year-old boy, who was found dead in the Upper Ganga Canal four days after he was reported missing from his house in Dadri, was allegedly drowned by his abductors.
According to the autopsy report, the child — son of a power department employee — does not have any severe injury marks on his body. It mentions “asphyxia due to drowning” as the cause of death.
On the morning of March 31, the boy was playing with his two sisters outside their home in a Dadri locality. Her sisters came home after a while, but he was nowhere to be found. His parents and neighbours searched the colony and nearby areas, but to no avail. In the evening, they approached police. Four days later on Sunday, his body was found floating in the canal in Bulandshahr, 40km away from home.
Since the body was bloated, police officers had claimed that the child may have been killed within a day of being abducted. They had also suspected the role of someone known to the family.
“The autopsy report mentions the cause of death as asphyxia due to drowning. The body seemed to be at least three days old,” a police officer said.
Bulandshahr senior superintendent police (SSP) Santosh Kumar had said on Sunday, “Most likely the body was dumped in the canal in Dadri area. It came floating here with the current.”
Local police in Dadri, however, believed the murder was most likely the fallout of an old dispute. “There is hardly any camera in the locality. We scanned footage from some cameras on the main road, took help of digital and manual surveillance, interrogated some suspicious people who were seen in the area at the time of kidnapping but could not get a breakthrough. But we are working on it,” an officer at Dadri police station had said.
The cops have detained two former tenants of the boy’s father. The cops, however, said they were yet to establish any of their roles in the alleged murder.
The child’s maternal uncle said the two detained persons — a woman and her lover — stayed on the floor above. “When the woman left the house about a month back, she had told the fellow tenants she would not let them stay in peace. The police are now claiming they are not at fault. But someone had been informing the accused about the developments in the house,” he added. The detained man, sources said, had changed at least eight SIM cards since January.
Additional commissioner of police (law and order) Love Kumar said they were still trying to probe their role in the case. “We cannot book them on mere suspicion,” the officer said.
Meanwhile, the Bar Association expressed disappointment with the police investigation in the case. “Such a small child has been killed and police are yet to make any arrests in the case. Apart from a hearing in the Sunder Bhati case, no work was carried out in the court on Monday,” said Rishipal Tiger, secretary of the association.