16-year-old boy kills 9-year-old neighbour, attempts to burn her body in Gurugram
The girl caught the teenaged boy stealing her mother’s jewellery when he visited her house purportedly to help with her homework
A 16-year-old boy allegedly strangled a nine-year-old girl to death at her house in Gurugram, and then tried to set her body on fire using naphthalene balls — a gruesome crime and a brazen attempt to recreate a true-crime TV show cover-up — in an incident that shocked residents in their middle-class housing society and police officers investigating the case.
The girl caught the teenaged boy stealing her mother’s jewellery when he visited her house purportedly to help with her homework, the officers said, adding that he was apprehended on Monday morning.
The case was the first registered under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) in Gurugram, even as the suspect was produced before the juvenile justice board and sent to an observation home.
An autopsy will be conducted on the corpse on Tuesday, said police, adding that they have not ruled out the possibility of sexual assault.
The boy’s mother and the victim’s mother, both residents of an apartment complex in Sector 107 on Dwarka Expressway, were acquainted, said police, adding that the 16-year-old used to play with the latter’s two-year-old son. In this vein, on Monday morning, the teenager asked the victim’s mother if he could play with her son, and took him to his house, two buildings away.
However, the 16-year-old slipped out of his house soon after. As the woman went to get her son back from their house, the boy went into the girl’s house without telling anyone. Minutes later, the girl saw him rummaging through her mother’s cupboard and confronted him.
“She shouted and threatened that she would inform her mother,” Karan Goel, Gurugram’s deputy commissioner of police (west).
At this point, the boy first strangled her with a dupatta. He then got hold napthalene balls and ground them, he said.
“He then kept the body over a pile of clothes and a pillow, sprinkled the grounds over them, and set this afire,” said Goel.
When the girl’s mother came back to her house with her son, the collapsible grille was drawn, but the door was open.
As she went inside, she saw flames spilling out of the bedroom, where her daughter’s body lay ablaze.
“The boy is very clever and seems to have watched a lot of crime serials,” Goel said.
He learnt to grind naphthalene balls to quickly burn incinerate a body from a Hindi true-crime show, Goel added.
Before he was caught, he threw the jewellery off the balcony onto the ground. When the woman saw him, he began shouting that the thieves had fled,” said the officer.
Another senior police officer associated with the case said that when they asked the boy if he tried to sexually harass or assault the victim, the teenager said “he was aware of law and that they can send a swab to a lab to rule out sexual assault.”
It was unclear why the boy was stealing the woman’s jewellery, said police, adding that the investigation will seek to ascertain this.
“He told us he wanted to repay ₹20,000 he had borrowed for a loan. But he has constantly changed his statements,” said Goel.
The case was registered under the BNS’s sections 103(1) (murder), 238(A) (causing disappearance of evidence of offence, or giving false information to screen offender), 305 (theft) and 62 (punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment) at the Rajendra Park police station on Monday.