india

Updated: Apr 30, 2019 07:39 IST

A one-and-a-half-yearold child was allegedly murdered by an 8-year-old boy in south Delhi’s Fatehpur Beri during the early hours of Saturday.

Police said the boy allegedly killed the toddler by drowning him in a small water tank near their house. Terming the murder an act of revenge, police said the boy was angered after his brother had fallen and injured himself a few days ago. He blamed the toddler’s elder sister for this and allegedly killed the child in revenge, police said.

According to the police, the incident came to fore when the child’s mother, a contractual wage earner from western Uttar Pradesh, woke up on Saturday morning and could not find her child around. “We received a call at the Fatehpur Beri police station that a one-and-a-half-yearold child had gone missing while his mother and 10-year-old sister were asleep on the roof of their house. A police team reached the spot and launched an intensive search for the boy. After about an hour, the toddler was found in a drain nearby,” a police officer, who did not wish to be identified, said.

He was bleeding from his right ear, police said, adding that he was rushed to a hospital where the doctors pronounced him dead on arrival. The body was preserved for a post-mortem examination at AIIMS and the police began probing his death.

Deputy commissioner of police (south) Vijay Kumar said during investigation, local residents were questioned and it came their attention that another boy, aged eight years, was also missing since morning.

“A search for the boy was launched and after about two hours, locals and police teams managed to locate him about a kilometre away from his house. When he was questioned about the toddler, he said he had drowned the child into a water tank near their house,” the DCP said. Quoting the eight-year-old, police said a few days ago, his younger brother had fallen while playing with a few children in the neighbourhood. “This had caused a minor swelling on his brother’s head. He said he held the toddler’s elder sister responsible for pushing his brother and therefore, wanted to teach her a lesson. In that rage, he said he took the boy and drowned him. Later, he threw him into the drain,” the officer said.

Police have registered a case of murder under IPC Section 302. Police said the statement of the 8-year-old child was recorded in presence of counsellors and that he will soon be produced before the juvenile justice board.

Although heinous crimes in which such young children are culprits are not often reported in Delhi, in 2017, there was another incident in which a fourand-a-half-year-old boy was booked for raping his classmate inside the classroom as well as the washroom of a prominent private school in west Delhi, police said. The girl, who was of the same age as the boy, told her mother that the boy used his finger and a sharpened pencil to assault her sexually.