Anand ST Das By

Express News Service

PATNA: Continuous poverty and the hardships of oppressive manual work far away from home made a Bihar youth so desirous of a life in jail that he ended up killing a nine-year-old boy in his village.

Avanish Kumar, 17, was arrested on Tuesday for strangulating Surbin Kumar, 9, to death in Chiknitola village under Saurbazar police station in the eastern Saharsa district. Police said the accused confessed his desperate longing for jail and that there was no other motivation behind the cold-blooded murder.

The son of a poor daily-wage labourer, Avanish had been working at construction sites in Delhi and Punjab for the past few years and had returned home a week back. He was playing with Surbin and a few other young children on a field near the village on Sunday afternoon. At the end of their game, he took Surbin away to an isolated place outside the village and strangulated him to death. He then dumped the boy’s body in a nearby pond, said police.

“The murder came to light after the villagers saw the boy’s body in the pond. Avanish was interrogated as villagers said the boy was last seen in his company. The accused confessed that he had killed him because he wanted to be in jail,” said Manish Kumar Razak, the SHO of Saurbazar police station.

An autopsy confirmed Surbin’s death occurred by strangulation apparently with bare hands. There were no other marks of injury on his body, said Razak, denying any element of sodomy in the case. Neither Avanish nor his parents had any enmity with the dead boy’s family, he added.

“Avanish had quit his studies from class three. He said he found it too hard to have to work far away from home just to get his food. After returning home a week ago, he had found work at a brick kiln but did not like the work,” said Razak.

The murder and the confessed reason behind it left Bihar shocked and prompted psychologists to raise alarms.

“This is an extreme instance of depravity in a teenager who is barely educated and fails to cope with the fast pace of life he sees around himself. It is time we had a deeper probe into the psyche of our youth to help them live better,” said Patna-based clinical psychologist Binda Singh.