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BENGALURU: Eleven months after a four-year-old boy was brutally raped and murdered, the alleged perpetrator has been nabbed, thanks to leads provided by drug addicts from a village near Hoskote town.

Narada Bhagat, a daily-wage labourer from Doddadunnasandra , was arrested for having sex with the boy before smothering him to death on the evening of January 1.

Narada, who had come to Bengaluru from Bihar 25 years ago and settled down in Hoskote, was the neighbour of the boy, who was staying with his parents — daily-wage labourers from Jharkhand.

Police said the boy had gone missing on the evening of January 1, when groups of youngsters were celebrating New Year with booze outside his residence. The parents, along with neighbours, including Narada, searched for the boy, whose decomposed body was found in a nearby eucalyptus grove on January 3.

Anugondanahalli police had registered a case and launched a manhunt for the suspect. With Narada in the forefront of the search operation, police didn’t suspect him.

The case was nearing dead end but Ravi D Channannanavar, superintendent of police (Bengaluru Rural), recently directed jurisdictional police to intensify efforts to solve it.

Inspector KK Raghu and sub-inspector BM Govinda revisited the crime scene and questioned several youths from the village. “The autopsy report received recently confirmed the killer had sexually assaulted the boy. So we suspected someone high on drugs may have committed the offence. We questioned two young labourers and one of them, from Andhra Pradesh, told us Narada used to invite them to have gay sex. We immediately picked up Narada, who initially denied his role but later confessed to the crime,” an investigating officer said.

According to police, Narada used to lend money to young labourers to purchase ganja. Later, he would offer to waive the loan if they had sex with him.

“I was searching for a partner on the evening of January 1 and found the boy playing near his residence. I took him to a nearby grove. I covered his mouth with my hands to prevent him from screaming and sexually assaulted him. After my act, I found the boy dead,” police quoted Narada as saying in his confession.

Narada claimed the death was an accident and he was wracked with guilt. He told police he quit eating for four days after the incident. Police produced him before the court on Thursday and he was remanded in judicial custody.

