Patna, June 11: Eight-year-old Satyam was kidnapped, sodomized and killed by 14-year-old Avinash and 13-year-old Khursheed alias Monu, all neighbours at Ashok Nagar under the Kankerbagh police station.
The gory killing had the residents of Kankerbagh seething in anger. They came out on the streets, set ablaze the kirana shop owned by Avinash’s father and blocked traffic at Ashok Nagar and on the New By-pass Road on Saturday morning.
Satyam used to accompany his father Rajesh Kumar, a businessman, to the kirana shop where he came in contact with Avinash, a class IX student of DAV-Danapur. The two became friends and Satyam used to call him `bhaiya’ (elder brother).
Locals said Avinash was a spoilt boy who used to steal money from his father’s shop. With this money, he had taken a room on rent on a little distance from his father’s kirana shop.
Satyam was playing near his house on Thursday when Avinash came and asked him to join him for a joyride on his bicycle. He then took the little boy to his room where Monu also joined them.
Police said Avinash and Monu sodomized Satyam and when he started crying and begged them to let him go home, Avinash strangled him to death. The duo then stuffed the body in a large polythene bag and kept it under the cot. Avinash later called up Satyam’s father and, without disclosing his identity, demanded Rs 5 lakh as ransom for the release of his son.
Police said Avinash had planned to dispose of the body on Saturday morning. But the neighbours happened to recover the body.
Patna SSP R Malar Vijhi said Avinash has confessed. “He said he executed the kidnap plan after watching Bollywood movie ‘Apharan’,” the SSP said, adding Kankerbagh SHO Giridhar Pandey has been suspended for dereliction of duty.
Pandey, Satyam’s neighbours alleged, did not react when his father went to lodge a complaint. “The boy was not kidnapped and that he had gone t
o play and would return on his own” was his repeated refrain.
“Had the police acted on time, my son would have been alive today,” Satyam’s wailing father told TOI.
—Agencies