BENGALURU: IT was child’s play, but it ended in murder. An eight-year-old boy was killed by his neighbour after a quarrel broke out between the two families over the boy beating the daughters of the accused.
The police have booked the accused, Chandeswar Matur (36) who hails from Bihar, for murder and remanded him in judicial custody.
The boy, Ramananda, while playing with the daughters of the accused, allegedly hit them, which led to a quarrel between the families for over a week.
The accused is a security guard. He killed the boy, packed the body in a gunny bag and dumped it on the bank of the Rayasandra Lake in the Parappana Agrahara police station limits.
Ramananda’s family lives at Doddamara Road in Rayasandra. His father worked as a security guard and his mother was a domestic worker in an apartment. The parents had not enrolled him in the school. Matur was a security guard at an apartment complex in southeast Bengaluru.
Matur lived with his wife and two daughters, in a house opposite Ramananda’s. Both families hailed from Bihar.
According to the police, Ramananda often fought with Matur’s daughters while playing, and allegedly beat them.
Matur had warned him several times not to harm his children. The frequent fights between the children eventually escalated into arguments between the families.
As both the parents went to work during the day, the children left at home, often played together and fought, leading to disputes among the parents when they returned in the evening.
On May 6, Matur, who was drunk, spoke kindly to Ramananda and took him for a walk around 6.40 pm. He then allegedly smothered the boy near the Rayasandra Lake, packed the body in a gunny bag and disposed of the body near the lakebed before returning home, the police said.
The police added that the boy’s parents searched for him. The next day, the families got into a heated argument, prompting a local resident to alert the police. The police brought both families in for questioning. Ramananda’s parents suspected that Matur had kidnapped their son. Upon checking the CCTV footage, Matur was seen walking with the boy. He later confessed to the murder, the police said.