A 7-year-old Dalit boy who went missing on Thursday evening was found brutally murdered two days later in a village in Hathras district, police said on Saturday.
The child, a Class 1 student and the only son of Rajpal Singh, had gone out to play in Khuntipur Jatan village but never returned. Despite frantic efforts by the family to find him, he remained untraceable until his body was discovered in a nearby farm.
“There were injury marks on his stomach and chest. His limbs were tied, and a black cloth was found wrapped around his body,” said a police official at the crime scene. “This points to a pre-planned and gruesome act,” the boy’s grandfather Prem Singh told reporters. “It seems he was killed elsewhere and dumped here. We want the killer to be caught and punished.”
Rajpal Singh, who runs a flour mill, had lodged a missing person’s complaint on Thursday. His worst fears were confirmed when the body was found on Saturday.
DSP (Sadabad) Himanshu Mathur said, “The body has been sent for postmortem. We have called in a forensic team and a dog squad. Four teams have been formed to investigate the matter. A case under BNS Section 103 (murder) has been registered against an unknown person.”
The village remains tense as locals demand justice and accountability for what appears to be a targeted killing.
