Bhubaneswar, April 21 Tension prevailed at Ratanpur village in Delanga block of Puri district in Odisha on Monday following the recovery of the decomposed body of a minor boy from the septic tank, who had been missing since April 15.
Police have detained the suspect Pravakar Sahoo alias Bapi, one of the distant relatives of the minor victim, in the case.
Meanwhile, the enraged villagers on Monday ransacked the house of the accused person, demanding capital punishment for him. The villagers have been accusing the police of negligence in the incident and have demanded a speedy trial in the case.
As per local sources, the deceased, Ashirbad Sahoo, the 11-year-old minor son of Manas Kumar Sahoo, had gone missing while playing near his residence at Ratanpur village under Delanga police limits in the evening on April 15.
The family members later lodged a missing report at the Delanga police station, suspecting the accused’s role in Ashirbad’s missing.
The police’s failure to trace the whereabouts of the missing child enraged the locals as thousands of villagers led by BJD leader and former MLA Rudra Pratap Maharathy staged a road blockade at Delanga market on Sunday.
The protesters, alleging the local police’s callous attitude and incompetence, demanded a Crime Branch probe into the missing case.
The local police had earlier detained the accused on the allegations of the deceased’s family members, but later released him without taking any action against the accused, which further enraged the villagers.
Following the protest and road blockade, Puri police intensified their probe into the case and apprehended the suspect Bapi from the Tangi area of Khurdha district on Sunday.
The accused reportedly confessed to the police about committing the crime and dumping the minor’s body into a septic tank during interrogation.
The police later recovered the purported decomposed naked body of the deceased from the septic tank of a local villager late Sunday night. Locals alleged that the accused committed unnatural sex with the minor and later killed him to destroy all evidence regarding the incident.
Talking to IANS, a senior police official on Monday said that the accused had a business rivalry with the deceased’s father for a long time and might have killed the minor for it.
Reacting to the allegations of unnatural sex as the reason behind the ghastly murder, the senior police official said the postmortem report of the deceased can only confirm these allegations.
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