A wave of grief and anger swept through Ratanpur village in Delanga block of Odisha’s Puri district after the decomposed body of 11-year-old Ashirbad Sahoo was discovered in a septic tank late Sunday night—six days after he went missing under mysterious circumstances.
The boy, son of Manas Kumar Sahoo, had last been seen playing near his home on April 15. As days passed with no trace of him, dread began to settle over the quiet village. That dread turned into outrage when police recovered his naked body from the septic tank of a local residence, allegedly dumped there by a relative.
Pravakar Sahoo alias Bapi, a distant relative of the family and now the prime suspect, was detained on Sunday from the Tangi area of Khurdha district. According to police sources, Bapi confessed during interrogation to murdering the child and disposing of the body in an attempt to cover up the crime.
Local fury boiled over on Monday as angry villagers ransacked the house of the accused, demanding the harshest punishment—nothing short of capital punishment. Many held the local police accountable for their delayed action and alleged negligence in handling the missing child case.
The unrest isn’t new. A day earlier, thousands of protesters—led by BJD leader and former MLA Rudra Pratap Maharathy—barricaded the Delanga market road, demanding a Crime Branch investigation. Locals accused police of incompetence, especially after they had initially detained Bapi but released him without pressing any charges.
As the case gathered steam, new layers of horror emerged. Some locals claimed the child had been sexually assaulted before being killed, citing circumstantial evidence. However, police say only the postmortem report will confirm if the crime had a sexual dimension.
A senior officer revealed that a long-standing business rivalry between Bapi and Ashirbad’s father could have been the motive behind the brutal act.
The village of Ratanpur remains gripped by grief, disbelief, and a burning demand for justice—for a child whose life ended far too soon, and far too cruelly.
