Ganjam: Police arrested a 22-year-old engineering student, Srikant Sethi, on Wednesday on charges of sexually assaulting and killing a four-year-old boy over the death of a four-year-old boy at Mundamarie village in Odisha’s Ganjam district on Tuesday.
Preliminary investigation suggested that the engineering student had sexually assaulted the boy, Nitesh Patra, and smashed the child’s head with an iron door fearing arrest, police said.
Soon after the crime, the accused fled the area and he was arrested near Aska, SDPO Uma Shankar Singh said.
However, the SDPO said that the precise cause of the boy’s death can be ascertained only after receiving the post-mortem report.
According to earlier reports, Nitesh had gone missing between 4:30 pm and 5 pm on Tuesday. Soon his family members began a frantic search to find Nitesh’s whereabouts. Sometime later, children in the locality told Nitesh’s family members that a youth named Srikant Sethi had taken the boy to the terrace of his house.
Acting on the information, Nitesh’s family members rushed to Srikant’s house and spotted the boy’s slippers. They searched the entire house and soon found Nitesh’s blood-stained body. According to Nitesh’s family members, the boy was beaten to death.
He was taken to a community health centre in Dharakote, where the doctor declared him dead.
“My son had gone missing at around 5 pm. After not finding him, searched for him everywhere in the village. Sometime later, a minor told us that he had seen my son at the neighbour’s house. When we searched the neighbour’s house we found Nitesh’s body there. Why should anyone do this to our son, we had no enmity with anyone,” said the deceased’s father Govind Patra.
