LUCKNOW: A wanted criminal who was accused of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering a seven-year-old boy was killed in a police encounter in Hardoi district of central early on Wednesday morning.
The accused, identified as Mahnoor alias Shahnoor alias Mehnuddin, 29, carried a reward of Rs 50,000 on his arrest.
According to police, Mahnoor was intercepted around 3 am in Babtamau, nearly 50 km from the city, when he allegedly opened fire on the police team.
Police retaliated, shooting him in the chest. He later succumbed to his injuries. Investigators said the accused had kidnapped the child while he was visiting an Urs fair with friends on May 3.
As per the police sources, victim’s father is a Hafiz and cleric at a local mosque and also runs a cosmetics shop. The child had gone to the fair after taking Rs 20 from his grandfather. When he did not return home until late at night, family members launched a search and lodged a missing-person complaint.
The victim’s family sources said that suddenly, the child’s father received a ransom call from Mahnoor demanding Rs 7 lakh for the boy’s release. Family members initially sought time to arrange the money but later informed the police instead of paying the ransom.
Preliminary investigation revealed that after the ransom was not paid, the child was sexually assaulted and murdered, and the body was buried in a sugarcane field.
Police traced the ransom call to Kanpur and arrested two accused persons on Tuesday.
Based on their interrogation, the child’s body was recovered and Mahnoor’s identity came to light.
Police then announced a reward on his arrest.
Officials said Mahnoor, a resident of Kannauj, had at least 12 criminal cases registered against him and was known for frequently changing his identity using multiple names.
Based on the inputs given by the accused, police recovered the child’s body from a pit dug in a maize field behind a madrasa, around 500 metres from the victim’s house.
The victim was studying in the UKG at a local Anganwadi centre.
Family members alleged that they had informed police about both the kidnapping and the ransom demand in time, but claimed the matter was not taken seriously initially.
Mahnoor’s killing marks the second police encounter in Uttar Pradesh within three days in connection with a murder case.
On Monday, police in Ambedkar Nagar shot dead 19-year-old Aamir, accused of murdering a woman and her four children on May 2.
