Teen kills 3 classmates over ₹20K loan in MP

GUNA (MADHYA PRADESH) : When three badly charred bodies surfaced in Madhya Pradesh’s Guna town over the last week, police knew they were onto something.

But what unfolded in the last 24 hours has shocked even the police. A loan of ~20,000 triggered a murderous spree that left three school-going boys — all of them friends and around 17 — dead.

The main suspect is a friend, a minor and a Class 11 student, who was nabbed on Sunday.

Details of the grizzly crime are sketchy but it all started when Hemant Meena, a resident Guna cantonment, gave a loan of ~20,000 to the main accused, Guna assistant superintendent of police Satyendra Tomar said on Tuesday. On May 18, Hemant’s family had lodged a complaint that the teenager who had left the house with ~40,000 to buy a motorcycle was missing.

Police began a probe and started questioning Hemant’s friends, who were neighbours in the cantonment. On May 25, Hemant’s burnt body was found by a roadside. Two days later, another burnt body turned up near a railway bridge. Police were alarmed when on Sunday a charred body was found on the outskirts of the cantonment. The bodies were of two of Hemant’s friends they had questioned, Tomar said. Police found Hemant was last seen with the main accused and detained him on Sunday.

During questioning, he told police he owed ~20,000 to Hemant, who had insulted him in front of his friends and asked for the money. He wanted to avenge the insult. On May 18, he invited Hemant and four other friends for a party. They got drunk and then four of them strangled Hemant, took away ~40,000 and set his body on fire, Tomar said.

The accused then thought of extorting money from Hemant’s family. He sent one of the friends to Indore to make a call to the family, saying Hemant would be released on payment of ~50 lakh.

But the friend got jittery and returned without making the call. The boy was nervous and would have cracked under pressure and so he killed him and dumped his body near the railway bridge.

He was not too sure of another friend, so he killed him too. He had similar plans for the third friend but police got to him first.