IAS aspirant used dead rats, perfumes to mask stench of boy’s body in suitcase
From collecting ‘evidence’ to suggesting names of ‘suspects’ who may have kidnapped a seven-year-old missing boy, police said that Avadhesh Sakya worked “intelligently” to keep the needle of suspicion away from him.
Sakya, 27, was arrested from his home in north Delhi’s Nathupura on Tuesday for allegedly killing the boy, Ashish Saini, and hiding his body in a bed box for 37 days. Aslam Khan, DCP (northwest), attributed the motive to Sakya’s hatred for the boy’s parents and his desire to extract ransom from them. Police are also probing Sakya’s relationship with the women in Ashish’s family and if that had anything to do with the murder.
An MSc in Physics and a native of Etah, in Uttar Pradesh, Sakya told police he had appeared for his civil services examination thrice, clearing the preliminary stage on two occasions. But for Ashish’s family, most locals of Nathupura, Sakya was a “senior officer with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)”.
“He would sometimes say he works for the Intelligence Bureau. At other times, he said he was with the Income Tax department. In January, he said he had become a CBI officer and would be taking up the job on February 12. He said he had been given a bungalow, a car, and a gun. He spoke fluent English and was educated and confident. We believed him,” said Ashish’s father, Karan Saini.
The “aura” he created around himself came handy when police began searching for Ashish, hours after he went missing around 5.30pm on January 7. Ashish had left his uncle’s home around 5.15pm and was captured by a CCTV camera near Sakya’s home at 5.17pm.
“Sakya was very enthusiastic about searching for my child. He helped me register a missing persons case with police the same day. He said he knew CBI officers and would get the investigation transferred to the agency. He also promised to get the crime branch and the special cell to trace the boy,” said the boy’s father.
Over the next four weeks, Sakya stayed over at Saini’s home, ate food with them, and guided them with the search. He would accompany them when they went to investigators as well as to the district DCP.
Meanwhile, police had been making frequent rounds of the neighbourhood to search for the boy. Residents said police would search bed boxes, racks and water tanks, but Sakya managed to keep them away from his own rented home. “Sakya would sit at the doorsteps of his building until the police team left,” said Shalini Rajour, a neighbour. When the boy’s father visited his home around a week ago and found a foul smell inside, Sakya pointed towards a dead rat.
“He immediately sprayed a bottle of perfume and the odour was gone. I did not know that the man we fed and loved was the killer,” the boy’s father said.
The DCP said Sakya bought poison to kill rats and would show dead rodents as source of the foul smell. But throughout, he nursed a grudge against the parents. “He was irritating and a loudmouth. But we never abused him,” said the boy’s father, dismissing Sakya’s allegations of abuse.
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