A week after Arman, 8, and Arshid, 4, went missing, their bodies were found on Tuesday, floating in a seven-foot ditch at a municipal park next to their home in Shakurpur Basti in West Delhi.
The police said the two might have fallen in the ditch while playing and drowned. The families today blamed MCD for digging the park and then leaving the ditches uncovered.
On November 25, Arman and Arshid went out to play together — like always. They both lived in the same building, on different floors. “We last saw them at 6.30 pm,” a neighbourhood child said today.
Arshid’s mother, Nasreen, who works in a nearby cloth factory, was home that day and started looking for her son around 7 pm. Arman’s mother, Nazima, who had returned from her village in Bihar the same day, was looking for her son, too.
Soon, the entire locality went searching for the duo.
“We went in rickshaws through every street in this area, shouting their names on loudspeakers,” Nasreen said.
Finally, they gave up the search at 2.30 am.
The families registered a case of kidnapping at Saraswati Vihar police station on November 26.
The families even put up posters on walls, backs of autorickshaws and buses, announcing a reward of Rs 5,000 for anyone returning the children.
On November 27, another local child Jyoti, 10, who had gone to play in the park, rushed to Nazima with a pair of little blue slippers. “Arman’s chappals,” she kept screaming.
“I found them floating in the ditch,” she said.
While one of the neighbours went in, nothing was found.
Bodies found
On Tuesday morning, Raja, 13, and his friends — all from the same neighbourhood — were playing in the park when he saw the bodies afloat. “I didn’t know what to do at first — they looked different,” the teen said. “But I recognised the clothes.”
The bodies were taken to Babu Jagjivan Ram Hospital for postmortem. “The bodies were completely swollen and we suspect the boys fell in the pit while playing,” an officer said.
The police added another charge of negligence against unknown persons in the case today.
DCP N S Bundela said the probe is on but “prima facie it seems to be a case of drowning”. The police, though, are yet to remove the charge of kidnapping.
The families, meanwhile, put the entire blame on MCD, which, they said, dug up the ditches on November 20 and didn’t cover them. “There are five ditches in the park and civic bodies just left them open,” Nasreen said. “We don’t want a park in which our children are buried.”
MCD Commissioner K S Mehra has ordered an inquiry by Deputy Commissioner of Rohini Zone and sought a report within three days.
–Agencies