NEW DELHI: The younger brother of the teenaged boy, who was lynched on suspicion of a theft attempt on Friday morning, has been missing in the wake of the incident. Yet to come to terms with the killing, the distraught family members of 15-year-old Sahil said they can’t believe that he had ventured into a house with the intention of robbing it of valuables.
Young Sahil was lynched by his neighbours in northwest Delhi’s Adarsh Nagar area on suspicion that he was behind a theft attempt in the area. Stoned by grief, his family members said that they haven’t heard from Sohail, his younger brother, since he was last seen with his elder sibling at their home in Kaushalpuri Basti.
The family has lodged a missing complaint. “They were sleeping. We don’t know where they went in the middle of the night. Nobody saw them leaving. Yesterday (Friday) morning, there was a huge crowd near the railway lines and somebody informed us that our boy was lying there, badly injured,” Rekha, 27, the aunt of the slain teenager, said. She said though the family knows the accused and their kin, they are “not on talking terms” with them. However, there’s “no animosity either”, she said.
Police said their neighbour Mukesh, 22, saw Sahil in his house and raised an alarm thinking he was there to steal. “Some people gathered near the house, got hold of the boy and started raining blows on him. He was later taken to a hospital where he succumbed to his injuries,” an officer said. Six people, including Mukesh and a minor, have been arrested in connection with the incident. Mukesh’s mother alleged that Sahil had made similar attempts earlier. “He tried to run away with my son’s phone,” said Anita, Mukesh’s mother.
Debunking the claim of the police that slain teen was a drug addict, his aunt said, “Nobody would believe that the boy could do drugs. He was very obedient. He did roam around with friends and often went out to play with them, but was back home by 10 pm,” Rekha said. The boy lost his mother three years back and his father, a plumber, had stopped working ever since. Nisha, his grandmother, recalled, “He can’t steal. If he were a thief, they must have found something on him. Even if he had robbed the house as was alleged, they should have informed us. Why did they have to kill him?”
‘He went to school till his mother was alive’
Nisha, the grandmother of the slain 15-year-old teen who runs a shop in the Adarsh Nagar slum and takes care of the family, said he studied till Class 3 or 4. He went to school till his mother was alive, she said, adding that he lost interest in studies after her mother’s passing and would often say, ‘I want to work in some company’. Sahil’s father, a plumber, stopped working after losing his wife