A man took revenge on his wife by kidnapping and killing her 11-year-old brother on Tuesday evening after his relations soured with her.
Lalit Kumar allegedly strangled the boy using a cloth and then dragged his body for a few metres to ensure he was dead.
To kill the boy, Kumar chose the very same spot where he had proposed to his wife over five years ago, said police. “During their courtship period, Kumar and his wife would often meet in that wooded area. Since he knew the area well, he chose that spot to kill the boy,” said AK Singla, DCP (north-east).
The murdered boy, Tejaswi, was a class 6 student at a private school in Bhajanpura, where he lived with his parents. His father is a swimming coach at a pool in east Delhi’s Surajmal Vihar and also provides his service to a few schools in the city. Tejaswi has five sisters and was the youngest of the six siblings.
Around five years ago, one of Tejaswi’s sisters had married Kumar who owns a mobile phone shop in Bhajanpura itself. “Theirs was a love marriage, much to the anguish of her father. But over the past few months, Kumar and his wife began fighting among themselves and had applied for divorce,” said the DCP.
Around two months ago, Kumar’s wife left him and returned to her maternal home with her three-year-old daughter. That allegedly left Kumar desperate for revenge. “Kumar knew that the boy was the favourite of his wife and father-in-law. He decided to seek revenge by killing the boy,” said the officer.
Kumar needed a safe location where he could kill the boy without anyone knowing. After considering multiple places, he zeroed in on a forested area behind Khanpur Radio Station in Narela Industrial Estate. He even allegedly conducted a recee of the spot two-three days before executing the crime.
Tejaswi was kidnapped around 2.45pm on Tuesday while he was playing outside his home. Kumar took him away on his motorcycle by offering to buy him kites of different designs. He rode the boy over 30 kilometres to the forest in Narela, tied his limbs and used a waste cloth to strangle him.
But even after strangling Tejaswi, Kumar was unsure if the boy had died or not. “He dragged the boy by his neck for several metres to ensure he had died. He then abandoned the body and returned home,” said an investigator.
Meanwhile, CCTV footage and an eyewitness account pointed towards his bitter relations with Tejaswi’s family and Kumar’s role in the crime. He initially claimed complete innocence before revealing everything to the police. The boy’s body, with the cloth still around his neck, was recovered around 3am.
