On Thursday, October 5, Haryana’s Panipat police recovered the dead body of a 14-year-old minor boy identified as Saurabh, from a sugarcane field in the district. The body was found in a completely decomposed state with the hands and legs missing and hair uprooted. The police said that the minor was killed by his 13-year-old friend. It has been reported that he committed the crime under the influence of the PUBG game.
The family of the deceased child alleged that the accused child’s family was complicit in the murder and that they killed their son to execute black magic rituals. Meanwhile, authorities are not ruling out the possibility that the body was preyed upon by dogs, which could explain the missing body parts.
On Thursday, October 5, when the police sent the deceased child’s body from Panipat Hospital to Rohtak PGI for post-mortem, his kins stood in front of the ambulance and protested. The police intervened and assured them that the case would be investigated thoroughly, only after which they allowed the body to be taken for post-mortem.
The police said that the accused at first was evasive during the interrogation, refusing to answer most of the questions, however, later when the police asked sternly, he started disclosing the truth. The accused confessed to strangulating his friend to death after he refused to give him his phone to play PUBG. After killing his friend, the accused fled from the crime scene, the police said, adding that the CCTV footage had helped them to narrow down on the accused.
The police said that on October 1 the victim went missing. When Rajpal, deceased Saurabh’s father returned home on October 1, he found his son Saurabh missing. He began looking for his son but was unable to locate him. He along with the police scanned the footage from the nearby CCTV camera was reviewed, Saurabh was seen leaving his school with the accused minor at around 11:55 a.m.
The police then scanned the footage of the CCTV camera installed near Peer in Babail village which again showed that the victim was with the accused in that area at around 12.40 pm. On the basis of the footage, the father along with the police went to the minor’s house at night and inquired about his kid, but received no response. His family members also continued to deceive the police.
Village Sarpanch Ved Prakash said that when suspicions increased, the police grilled the accused child again on Thursday after which he broke down and confessed to the murder.