india

Updated: Jun 02, 2019 07:56 IST

A 23-year-old woman and her 21-year-old live-in partner were arrested on Friday for allegedly murdering her four-year-old son and burying his body after cooking up two different stories — one for her family and another for neighbours — to pass it off as an accidental death, the police said.

The police said the child’s body with his head and left arm missing was dug out from the burial ground at Wazirabad cremation ground on May 2 — eight days after he was murdered. They are now probing how the child’s head and arm are missing, despite the body being buried.

The couple are being interrogated to ascertain if they had severed the head and dumped it somewhere to destroy evidence and avoid arrest, the police said.

They suspects have been identified as Komal and her live-in-partner Ravikar.

The couple was arrested on Friday, 38 days after the incident, from southwest Delhi’s Om Vihar Extension, where they lived in a rented flat. Ravikar allegedly murdered the child in front of her by smashing the child’s head against a wall. A case of murder was registered on Friday.

The police said the two confessed to the crime and disclosed that Ravikar wanted to marry Komal, but did not accept her son, Saksham. However, Komal was insistent he accept both of them. Since the couple often had altercations over that matter and Ravikar considered the child a hindrance in the marriage, he murdered the child in a fit of rage.

“The couple then cooked up stories to pass off the death as accidental,” Anto Alphonse, deputy commissioner of police (Dwarka), said.

On April 23, the couple informed their neighbours that Saksham succumbed to serious head injuries that he suffered when he slipped and fell from the staircase three days ago. On Ravikar’s request, the neighbours accompanied him to the Wazirabad cremation ground where the child’s last rites were performed and his body buried on April 24.

“The neighbours initially did not suspect any foul play as they were not aware that the couple was in a live-in relationship and not married, as they had claimed while renting the flat. But as the couple locked the flat went missing after the child’s cremation, some neighbours became doubtful,” said an investigator.

The police learnt about the child’s death on April 24, after Komal’s relative contacted them and suspected he was murdered. The police said that they got suspicious when they learnt the woman told her family her son died after being hit by a car.

Thereafter, the police directed Komal’s family members and neighbours to alert them whenever the couple contacts them or returns to their home or the rented home.

The two were arrested on Friday after a neighbour spotted them in the area.