Noida boys leave home with father for a walk, found murdered in green belt next morning

NOIDA: Two children, brothers aged 3 and 6, were found murdered in a green belt near Billabong International School on Wednesday morning. The children’s father, who had taken them out for a walk on Tuesday evening and has been missing since, is the prime suspect.
The children’s throats had been slit, most likely with a blade, police said. The six-year-old’s fingers were still wrapped around a toffee. On the same hand were lacerations near the vein. Police found a blade as well as a white shirt at the spot, in the Sector 34 green belt.
The spot from where police recovered the bodies
Additional DCP (Noida) Ranvijay Singh told TOI, “CCTV footage shows Mahesh in the vicinity of the green belt area where the children were found dead. He doesn’t have a shirt on, only a vest. Police are trying to trace him. It is possible that the children were poisoned or strangled and their throats were slit later.”
Monu and the younger boy Umesh, who the family also called Tinka, were told by their father Mahesh he would be taking them to a nearby park, family members told TOI. Mahesh, who used to work in a private export company in Phase II, was jobless for the past two months, but he hadn’t told his wife. He would leave every evening, claiming he had night shifts, with a tiffin box in which his wife packed a meal.
On Tuesday, he had returned home around 6.30pm and told his wife to prepare his dinner. “The kids had just returned from tuition classes and he said he wanted to take them out,” Mahesh’s younger brother Arun told TOI. “He wanted to take my son with him too, but I refused. He parked his bike, kept his phone in the house and left with his two sons,” he added.
Mahesh did take the kids to a park, where he spent an hour and left around 7.30pm, police said. ACP 2 (Noida) Rajnish Verma said some acquaintances of the family had seen Mahesh and the children in the park. Verma said a CCTV camera had captured them walking towards Sector 34 subsequently. When they didn’t return till 8.30pm, the family began looking for them. “We checked the nearby parks and metro stations. We went all the way to Gadhi Chaukhandi and Parthala but did not find them,” Arun said.
The family said they went to the Sector 51 police post, where cops asked for photos of those missing and asked the family to return the next morning. A case was filed at Sector 49 police station at 3.13 pm on Wednesday, more than three hours after the recovery of the kids’ bodies. “The dog squad led us to the area where the murder took place. We have some clues,” Verma said.
Arun said Mahesh was upset because he wasn’t able to find a job. Unlike his sister-in-law, Arun seemed to be aware of Mahesh’s plight. “He had been working with a private export company till two months back but lost his job. He joined another company, but its owner died within a few days and the owner’s son stopped the work soon after his death. The loss of the second job disturbed him. Money issues would lead to fights in his household,” Arun said.