NEW DELHI: Befuddled after consuming drugs, two men allegedly killed a 6-year-old boy as ‘human sacrifice’ by slitting his throat and attacking him on the head in South Delhi’s Lodhi Colony, police said on Sunday. The accused were identified as Vijay Kumar (23), a resident of Katihar, Bihar and Amar
Kumar (21), a resident of Saharsa, Bihar.
Furnishing details of the gruesome incident, Deputy Commissioner of Police (south district) Chandan Chowdhary said they received information that two men have slit the throat of a child, identified as Dharmendra, at the construction site of CGO Complex, near the CBI building after which the police staff rushed to the spot and found the parents of the deceased child crying next to their son’s body.
“The child was found dead in the jhuggi where the accused used to live. There were injury marks on the neck and the head of the child,” the DCP said.
Delhi Police crime team along with a team from Forensic Science Laboratory examined the area after which the body of the deceased child was shifted to All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Trauma Centre. Accordingly, the police lodged an FIR and a case was registered under Sections 302 (murder) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The accused and the boy’s parents were working as labourers at the said construction site, said the police.
The boy’s father said some women were singing bhajans at the construction site on Saturday night after dinner and his son was around. However, when they were about to leave for their respective sheds, the boy went missing. After searching for his child, the father noticed blood oozing out of their shed and he opened the door only to see his son’s body beneath the cot, said the police.
The accused, during interrogation, told the police that they were disillusioned and thought that Lord Shiva had asked them to perform a “human sacrifice” in order to gain prosperity and hence killed the boy.
Police said the kitchen knife used in the murder and the clothes the accused were wearing during the crime have been recovered. He added that the accused have been arrested.
‘We thought blood was of a butchered chicken’
The inconsolable parents of the child said that while they were searching for their missing son, they saw blood coming out of a shanty and thought that it was the blood of a butchered chicken.
“Our son was playing just next to me and said that he feels sleepy so I asked him to go back to his shanty. When we returned we didn’t find him there and started searching for him. I saw the blood oozing out from one of the shanties and thought that the labourers inside it might have butchered a chicken and went ahead,” said Bhagwati, the mother of the deceased child.
She said that his father and other labourers kept their search on and ultimately barged into that suspected shanty and found that our son was dead, lying beneath a cot.“I had never imagined that it would be my son’s blood. These monsters should be severely punished,” Bhagwati said.
Another relative of the deceased child said the accused were drug addicts and had talked about superstitious things but they never bothered about it. “When we caught them red-handed, one of them even tried to escape but we caught him after a brief chase and then handed him over to the police,” she said.
As a pall of gloom descended on the area, the parents and other labourers demanded the strictest punishment for the accused duo. The accused and the boy’s parents were working as construction labourers.