india

Updated: Mar 19, 2015 19:08 IST

A home tutor chopped up the body of a 10-year-old student and dumped the pieces in a ditch after a failed bid to collect a ransom from the victim’s family in Bihar’s East Champaran district, police said on Thursday.

The accused, Sandhir Dubey, used to give tuitions to Vivek Tiwari of Barharwa village under Dhaka police station. The boy was murdered on February 9 but his severed body could be recovered only on the night of March 17 from a ditch at Rampurwa village 11 kilometres away.

Dubey and a minor boy, who was allegedly forced to assist in the crime, had been taken into custody, police said.

Initial investigations revealed that Dubey, who used to visit the victim’s home to give him tuitions, abducted him after his parents could not pay Rs 5,000 as advance fee for five months.

Later, the boy’s family received a ransom call for `15 lakh soon after his abduction on February 9. But when the parents expressed their inability to pay the ransom, the accused murdered him, police said, adding that till that point the family did not know the caller was their son’s teacher.

Police said the boy's head, hands and legs were severed and found lying around a ditch. Police also claimed to have recovered a bloody axe besidesthe butt and the barrel of a pistol.

East Champaran superintendent of police Sunil Kumar said a part of the body had been preserved for DNA profiling. Police have taken Dubey and the 14-year-old alleged accomplice, who was said to be a distant relative of the teacher, on remand.

Police said the juvenile, under intense pressure during the interrogation, broke down and gave the details of the gory incident.

The victim’s father said the family had sought the teacher’s help to locate his son when he went missing.

"We paid `3,500 for petrol for his bike and purchased a mobile for him when he asked for it to join the search for the boy,” he said.

However, we felt something suspicious about his behaviour and told the police about it,” he said.

Angry locals thrashed Dubey when he was being taken to jail on Thursday. He was again beaten up by the inmates of Motihari central jail.