By all accounts so far, lack of capacity to mingle with peers and adjust with the new surroundings at Sant Asaram Bapu’s Gurukul (boarding school) in Chhindwara led a 14-year-old ninth grader to commit a double murder within a short span of two days.
Investigations so far have revealed that the ninth grader killed two little schoolmates to create a sensation that could lead to the school’s closure. He purportedly committed such a heinous crime only to return home.
Jabalpur Range Inspector-General of Police M.R. Krishna told The Hindu on Monday that the accused, who comes from a wealthy agriculturist family and is a resident of Bichua village near Chhindwara, has confessed and has been arrested under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code for the double murder. He has been sent to judicial remand and would be produced at the Juvenile Court at Narsinghpur.
Investigations have revealed that the accused had taken admission to Asaram’s Gurukul only 20 days ago along with two of his cousins. Within a short period he had asked his father to withdraw him from the residential school as he was home-sick and wanted to return to his mother. As he was obese, the boys in the school started teasing him by nicknaming him “Haathi” (elephant). Psychiatric treatment
Significantly, he had undergone psychiatric treatment at Nagpur in the past. He purportedly told the police during cross-examination that he was missing home food.. When the accused heard about the death of two students and the closure of Asaram Bapu’s Ashram in Ahemdabad, he thought even his school would be closed if something like that happened in his institution.
He told the police that he had seen on television how a person could be asphyxiated and killed. The boys’ hostel in the ashram is a two-story building. The younger children, from nursery to the fifth grade, were staying in the ground floor while the senior students were occupying the first floor. Remained mystery
Every evening the children went out to play between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. It was close to 6 p.m. on July 29 that the accused hid near the toilet on the ground floor and when a five-year-old child arrived there, he took him inside the toilet on the pretext of offering chocolates and once there tried to overpower him but the boy managed to escape. Soon another boy was caught by him and was gagged to death inside the toilet.
This murder remained a mystery for two days, and since the school did not shut down, another murder was planned by the accused when he heard some teachers saying that the school would be closed if another boy died under the prevailing circumstances. This led to the murder of Vedanta on July 31. Vedanta struggled for life and the accused even bit his left rear shoulder during the fight.
During post-mortem, a suspect’s teeth imprint matched with the wound on the left rear shoulder of the body and this led to his arrest.
Source: THE Hindu
