Tenant killed 4yearold, stuffed body in box: Cops
60yrold man had allegedly stabbed the 4yearold boy
GHAZIABAD: A 60-year-old man had allegedly murdered the fouryear-old boy, whose body was recovered in Sahibabad in June 18 months after he had gone missing, for resisting his sexual assault, police claimed on Sunday. Rajendra Shah, the alleged murderer who was a tenant of the boy’s family, has been arrested.
The boy’s decomposed body was recovered from a wooden chest on the rooftop of a neighbour’s house on June 3. He had gone missing after returning from school on December 1, 2016.
“The man (Shah) has confessed to the crime,’’ claimed circle officer (Sahibabad) Rakesh Mishra. He claimed the boy shouted when Shah allegedly tried to sexually assault him under the influence of alcohol. “As a result, the accused stabbed him in the abdomen with a knife. When everyone was out searching for the boy, Shah placed the body in the wooden chest, which was lying on the rooftop.”
Shah insisted he had been framed. “I was drunk that day and did not know what had happened to…. (the boy). I am being framed and have no involvement in the case. It was the boy’s father who asked me to leave his house. I never ran away from their house,” he told reporters at a Sahibabad police station.
Senior superintendent of police Vaibhav Krishna acknowledged that they do not have much evidence except the custodial confession, which is inadmissible in court. “We are awaiting more forensic reports, which will establish or help us in knowing how the children died. The post-mortem report remained inconclusive (about the cause of the death). We will investigate the matter further and more evidence will be collected.”
Shah stayed on the ground floor of the boy’s house with his wife, her sister and an eightyear-old nephew. Police said other family members of Shah were not involved in the murder.
The boy’s father said they had Shah’s family vacate their house a few months after his son’s disappearance. “We were busy searching for my son and never found anything unusual like blood etc in (Shah)’s room. We never got any foul smell even as the body was on the rooftop,” the father said.
Mishra said Shah seems to be mentally unstable and he was untraceable after he left the house. “This made us suspicious. Our teams tried to search him in Delhi, Haryana and Bihar but he gave us the slip each time. We arrested him from Sahibabad as he had come here and called the boy’s father as he thought that he had sent police to his native place in Bihar.”The boy’s body was recovered on June 3 after some children stumbled upon it when they had gone to the rooftop to find their cricket ball.