6-yr-old boy killed by neighbour over ‘daily mischiefs’
A six-year-old boy, Shubhpreet Singh, was strangulated to death allegedly by an 18-year-old neighbour over his fiddling with a power generator and scratching his tractor with a needle, in Malakpur village of Jandiala Guru subdivision in Amritsar district, police said on Tuesday.
Shubhpreet, a student of Class 1 and belonging to a Dalit family, was reported missing late Monday evening, and teams of Amritsar rural police joined forces with villagers for a search.
Near his house, inside a room that farmer Gurmej Singh utilised to store cattle feed, they found his slipper that was identified by the family. The body was found under a large tyre around 1 am on Tuesday. A piece of cloth purportedly used to strangle the boy was found near it, said Parampal Singh, senior superintendent of police, at a press conference held here.
Gurmej’s 18-year-old son, Gurpreet Singh, emerged as one of the suspects. “We rounded up the persons who were seen with the victim that day. By the morning, we solved the case and arrested Gurpreet Singh,” said the SSP.
He claimed Gurpreet “confessed” that he killed the child because he used to “irritate” him by “defacing his tractor with a metal needle and playing with the electricity generator”. Police said he had planned to throw the body into the village pond.
A case was registered under sections 302 (murder) and 201 (causing disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC); police ruled out sexual abuse.
“If a child commits mischief while playing, it does not mean that he should be killed,” commented the SSP.