india

Updated: Apr 28, 2017 11:16 IST

In a fit of rage, an impoverished man strangulated his two-year-old crying son for disturbing him in sleep and threw his body into an adjoining rivulet at Belawadan village in Purnia district, around 350 kms east of Patna, late Sunday evening.

Mangal Sharma, 35, a daily wager, has been arrested and sent to jail, after his wife Sulekha Devi lodged a complaint with the Banmankhi police station, Monday morning.

Police said Sharma was ticked off when his youngest of three children, Adarsh Kumar, 2, began crying at night. A couple of hours later, when Devi got up and enquired from her husband about her youngest son, who was missing, her husband only told her that he was crying.

She immediately became suspicious. Sensing foul play, she rushed out of the house and saw her child’s body along the side of a rivulet.

Devi told the police that her husband was mentally unsound. Devi claimed that Sharma was behaving in a weird manner for the last couple of months. She, however, could not back her claim with medical records, the police said.

Purnia superintendent of police Nishant Kumar Tiwary told HT, “We have arrested the accused and are in the process of filing the chargesheet, which should be ready in about 24 hours. The post-mortem examination of the body has been done. We will go for speedy trial in the case.”

With Sharma behind bars, police said it would now be an uphill task for Devi to ensure two square meals a day for self and her two surviving children — Neha Kumari, 5, and Aditya Kumar, 3. But more than her worries about food, Devi wants justice for her youngest son.