With the help of a sniffer dog, Delhi Police has arrested a man for allegedly sexually assaulting and killing a six-year-old boy in northeast Delhi’s Harsh Vihar. Investigators found that the accused was also arrested in 2009 but was let off. During questioning on Saturday, the accused told police he has sexually abused and killed eight minor boys since 2007. Police are yet to verify his claims.
DCP (northeast) A K Singla confirmed that the 40-year-old labourer, Ram Niwas, had made the claims during questioning. “We are verifying and coordinating with other officers,” he said. On August 12, the boy’s father, who runs a tea shop, approached police after his son went missing. Police eventually recovered the boy’s body from a nursery, not far from the complainant’s tea shop.
“Police then called in a dog squad, and one of the dogs led them to an under-construction house nearby. The guard told police that Ram Niwas had been missing for the last few days. Using technical surveillance, police traced him to near Shahdara railway station and a team was sent there. But he switched off both his cell phones soon after,” a senior officer said.
On checking his criminal record, police found he had been arrested in 2009. A team was sent to his native village, Amla, in UP, but he was not there. “A team led by inspector Vinay Yadav and ACP Sashank Jaiswal eventually arrested the accused from Mandoli,” Singla said.
During questioning, the accused alleged he had been sodomised by his friends when he was a child. He claimed he lost both his parents in his childhood, and started plying a rickshaw after moving to Delhi. “He also alleged that some rickshaw pullers sodomised him. He claimed that he sodomised and murdered a boy in Amla in 2005. He said he got married in 2007, but the woman left him after three months. He claimed that in 2008-2009, he kidnapped three minor ragpickers from Old Delhi railway station and sodomised and killed them,” an officer said.
Singla said Niwas was working at a tent house in 2009 when he allegedly kidnapped the six-year-old son of his employer, who “refused to give him Rs 45,000”. “He allegedly took the boy to Bareilly and beheaded him after sexually assaulting him. He was later arrested,” Singla said.
But when the boy’s head was recovered, a DNA test could not conclusively link the victim to the parents, police said. Niwas eventually got out of jail in 2012. “He then worked as a labourer in Sonipat before returning to Delhi in 2014,” police said. Police said Niwas had had several arguments with the tea shop owner — father of the boy who was murdered — after getting drunk. According to police, on August 11, Niwas consumed liquor and allegedly called the six-year-old to an under-construction site, where he sodomised him. “When the boy said he will inform his father, he strangled him,” Singla said.
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