The Hindu : Front Page : Kidnapped Delhi teenagers found murdered

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 14, 2007
ePaper

Front Page

Front Page

Kidnapped Delhi teenagers found murdered

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: Two teenage students of Sarvodaya Senior Secondary Model School in Delhi's Shiv Garden who went missing on Monday afternoon under highly mysterious circumstances were found murdered in the Wazirabad Ridge area in the early hours of Tuesday. Four young men who allegedly kidnapped and killed them for ransom have been arrested.

The victims - 14-year-old Chetan Swaroop and 13-year-old Sahil Goyal -- were cousins and lived in neighbouring houses at Karawal Nagar in the Capital's trans-Yamuna area. When they did not return home from school on Monday afternoon in a three-wheeler auto as they usually did, their families lodged a complaint with the police. A case of kidnapping was registered.

Ransom call

Several police teams were formed under the supervision of ACP R. P. Gautam to trace the children. The breakthrough came in a ransom call received on the mobile phone of the complainant at 7-30 p.m.

Tracing the ransom call, the police pieced together information from local sources and a classmate of the victims, Sarthak Sharma, and arrested the suspects -- Monu alias Bijender, Mohammad Nadeem and Shakeel -- from a public phone booth in Karawal Nagar at 10-30 p.m. They had come there allegedly to make the second ransom call. At their instance, their accomplice Vinod, an auto-rickshaw driver, was also arrested.

The police have recovered the bodies of the two boys and their bloodstained clothes along with the weapon of crime.

Deputy Commissioner of Police (North-East) Ravinder Kumar said prime accused Monu, whose brother Sonu worked in the grocery shop of the victims' grandfather, hatched a conspiracy with his friends -- Mohammad Nadeem, Shakeel and Vinod -- to kidnap the two to make easy money.

Since Monu was known to the victims, he allegedly offered to drop them home after school in Vinod's auto-rickshaw on Monday afternoon. The unsuspecting boys went with them. The four took them to the Ridge and allegedly slit their throats with a hatchet.

"It was a pre-mediated murder since the accused feared that the victims could reveal their identity," said DCP Kumar.

After dumping the bodies, the killers made a ransom call demanding Rs. 4 lakhs.

One of the accused, Vinod, drives an auto-rickshaw in Shiv Vihar, while the other three unemployed youths are all school dropouts who took to crime to make easy money, the police said.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Front Page