10-year-old's body found in Gurgaon garbage yard

GURGAON: A 10-year-old boy playing outside his house was allegedly abducted by a 24-year-old man, who sexually assaulted him before slitting his throat and throwing the body in a dump yard on Sunday evening.
Police said the accused, Prince, was known to the boy and his family, which is why he raised no suspicion when he asked the kid to come with him.
After the murder, Prince made a ransom call to the minor's father. After arresting him on Monday, police said the ransom call was an attempt to mislead investigators into believing it was a kidnapping that had gone awry rather than a calculated, cold-blooded crime.
The accused has been booked under sections 365 (kidnapping), 302 (murder), 377 (sodomy), 201 (destruction of evidence) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and Section 6 (aggravated sexual assault) of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act.
Police said the boy was playing outside his home around 5.30pm on Sunday when Prince came on his motorcycle and asked the 10-year-old to accompany him. The accused would often visit the residential area to meet his brother, who lives nearby.
The minor readily accompanied him on the two-wheeler. But Prince took him to an isolated area in Manesar, where he sexually assaulted him. When the boy screamed for help, he slit his throat and dumped the body and the knife at a garbage yard in the area, police said.
The boy's family started looking for him when he didn't return home that evening. At 7.30pm, two hours after abducting the boy, Prince made a ransom call to the family, demanding Rs 2 lakh in cash to be dropped off in Manesar. The family, which did not have that amount, approached cops and filed a missing person complaint.
A search team was deployed. Prince had used a different SIM card to make the ransom call to avoid detection but the same mobile handset. Police said they tracked him down to his rented accommodation in Manesar through the IMEI number. In the early hours of Monday, the 24-year-old was arrested, and after interrogation, he led cops to the boy's body and the murder weapon.
The post-mortem report confirmed sexual assault, cops said. ACP (crime) Preet Pal Sangwan said the accused's brother was a neighbour of the boy's family. "Prince was familiar with the boy's family and he took advantage of this to abduct the minor," the ACP said.
After his arrest, Prince was presented before a local court and taken on a day's police remand, the ACP said, adding that they haven't found any previous criminal record of the accused yet.
The boy's father, an employee at a factory, told TOI Prince used to visit their home and interact with the minor. "Prince was friendly with my son. We had taught our son not to talk to strangers... How does a parent protect his child from such a person?" the father asked.
Data recorded in India and abroad has shown repeatedly that in a majority of crimes against children, the accused is known to the minor's family. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), around 5,700 cases of crime against children were registered in Haryana in 2021, a jump of around 30% from the 4,338 reported in 2020.