A six-year-old boy, nephew of a Congress leader from Mhow in Indore, was abducted and killed by his distant cousins on Sunday evening.
The kidnappers had demanded Rs 4 crore ransom from Jitendra Singh Chauhan, the kid’s father. Jitendra is the younger brother of Vijendar Singh Chouhan, a former Youth Congress office-bearer.
Indore police cracked the case in two hours with help of CCTV footage in which the kid was seen accompanying one of the accused Hritik Chouhan.
Following detention and interrogation, Hritik, 20, confessed that he kidnapped Harsh Chouhan and handed him over to his cousin Vikas Chouhan, 23. Police nabbed Vikas from Omkareshwar where he was hiding in a hotel. Both have been formally arrested and a case was registered.
“Both accused confessed to killing Harsh by strangulating him when they found that the entire joint family of Jitendra Singh Chouhan had heard the ransom call, made about two hours after the kidnapping, and informed police. It is evident that they had planned the murder in advance because they knew that the child could identify them,” Bhagwat Singh Birde, Superintendent of Police (SP) of Indore (Rural) told The Week.
The body of the boy was found later in the night under a culvert in a nearby village. Post-mortem confirmed strangulation after gagging.
According to police, Harsh went missing from near his home at Pigdambar in Mhow at around 6.30pm on Sunday. The joint family has around 50-60 members and they kept searching for the boy in different places when Jitendra Chouhan got the ransom call. As he had kept his phone on loudspeaker, a number of family members heard the call and decided to inform the police.
Police started a search for the boy; started tracking the number from which the ransom call was made and also started looking into the CCTV footage from the entire locality. “Pigdambar has majority residents of the same community and they are close-knit, so we were sure from the beginning that some known person was involved in the crime. Then we found CCTV footage from near a railway track, where the boy was seen accompanying accused Hritik. It was clear from the footage that the boy knew the accused and soon his identity was confirmed. We cracked the case within two hours of getting the complaint,” Birde said.
“In their confession, the accused said that Hritik, who is the son of Jitendra’s cousin, was tracking the developments following the kidnapping by staying near the family members. When he found that the police had been informed, he informed Vikas and they decided to kill Harsh immediately,” the SP said.
Kamal Nath demands immediate justice
Meanwhile, former chief minister and MP Congress chief Kamal Nath questioned the law and order situation in the state in the context of the incident. “The tragic case of kidnapping and murder of Congress leader Vijender Singh Chouhan's nephew Harsh Chouhan has come to the fore. The brutal killing of an innocent child is a matter of great sorrow for the Congress family and a big question mark on the law and order situation in Madhya Pradesh. I urge the Chief Minister to provide immediate justice to the victim's family,” Nath tweeted.
