They informed the locals, following which the boy’s father reached the spot and identified it by his clothes, he said, adding the skeleton has been sent for autopsy and DNA test.

A year and a half after he went missing, police on Sunday recovered the decomposed body of a four-year-old from a wooden box lying on the terrace of a house in Garima Garden area of Sahibabad in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh. “Today (Sunday), some children playing in the street went to the terrace of a building to search for their missing ball and noticed the decomposed body in the wooden box on the roof of the adjacent building,” a police officer said.

They informed the locals, following which the boy’s father reached the spot and identified it by his clothes, he said, adding the skeleton has been sent for autopsy and DNA test. A call was received at 10.30 am, said SHO of Sahibabad police station Rakesh Kumar Singh. “The body was decomposed. The child’s father identified him based on the woollen clothes he had been wearing when he went missing. We are questioning family members and relatives,” Singh said.

According to reports, the boy went missing from his house On December 1, 2016. His father, Nazar Mohammad, lodged a police complaint. A few days later, his father received a call demanding a ransom of Rs 8 lakh for the release of his son, police said. Subsequently, two persons, who belong to the locality, were arrested by police. These two accused had claimed to have kidnapped the boy for ransom. They were sent to jail and got out on bail after a year. Now, police said it appears the duo might have made a fake ransom call after spotting posters of the missing boy in the area. Police said it appears the duo might have made a fake ransom call after spotting posters of the missing boy in the area.

Police said the investigation into the case has been reopened. The neighbour informed police that the boxes were stored on the terrace after his daughter’s wedding in November 2016. “We have reopened the investigation… and suspect an insider’s role. The terraces are joined. One can only access it from inside the houses. It appears the child was murdered the day he went missing and stuffed in the crate. The lid might have come off during the recent squalls,” the SHO was quoted as saying by IE.