LUCKNOW Four people, including a minor, were nabbed by the police after a 12-year-old boy was allegedly kidnapped and killed in a Sitapur village on Tuesday. The victim’s body was dumped into Sharda canal of neighbouring Lakhimpur district, said police on Thursday.
Cops took the four kidnappers into custody and were carrying out a search operation to recover the boy’s body dumped into the canal nearly 50 km from his village under Sakran police station limits of Sitapur.
The boy, Shivansh Mishra, had gone missing on Tuesday from Sirkida village. After his kin were informed about the death, they created a ruckus at the local police station and blocked the Sakran-Sitapur road, accusing the Sakran police of negligence. The family members and villagers accused the police of delayed search operation, claiming the boy would have been alive had the cops acted instantly after getting information about his kidnapping on Tuesday evening.
SP (Sitapur) Chakresh Mishra informed that the arrested accused were identified as Ankur Trivedi, 25, Rinku Mishra, 22, Puneet Shukla, 20, and a 17-year-old boy. He said Rinku was familiar with Shivansh and frequently visited his house.
Shivansh’s father, Vikas Mishra, had passed away a few years ago, and he along with his mother, stayed with his uncle Shivam Mishra. Rinku believed that the family would easily pay a ransom of ₹15-20 lakh for the boy’s safe return and hatched the kidnapping plot for a fast buck, he added.
The victim, along with some other children, had gone to ‘Chakle Baba’ temple of Lord Shiva near his village on Tuesday morning from where Rinku Mishra and his friends – Ankit Trivedi, Puneet Shukla and the teenager – took him along for a car ride and provided him some eatables, said another police official.
He said the kidnappers even beat up the boy when he started crying and wanted to return home after two hours. They put a tape on his mouth before putting him in the car’s boot space. “The kidnappers decided to kill the boy when his uncle Shivam Mishra started calling Rinku Mishra after another child of the same village informed his family that he had spotted the victim going along with Rinku. The kidnappers also came to know that the family had lodged an FIR of kidnapping suspecting Rinku’s role in the incident,” he said.
The official said the kidnappers strangulated the child to death and dumped his body into the canal. Efforts were on with the help of State Disaster Response Force to recover the body.