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Skeletons of 17 Children Found, 9 Identified
Noida, Dec 30 (IANS) The
gruesome tale of sexual abuse and serial killing of dozens of
children that has shocked India got even weirder with the discovery
and identification of more skeletons and revelations that the main
culprit was a rich businessman from Punjab who preyed on his
innocent victims for almost two years.
Police did not rule out the angle of human organ trading too as
distraught parents of missing children thronged the road in front of
a villa in Noida's Sector 31 from where the skulls were found.
Police feared they might stumble on more such remains in the coming
days while local people whose children were missing were keeping
their fingers crossed.
The parents, mostly daily wagers, say the police were callous in
their attitude to the missing person complaints they had filed, as
they were poor.
At the end of the second day of searches in the house in the
suburban town of the capital, police recovered 17 skulls of
children, mostly girls, even as five policemen were suspended and
one was transferred for mishandling investigation of missing
children for almost two years.
"We have found 17 skulls of which nine children have been identified
by the murderers," said Rajesh Kumar Singh Rathore, senior
superintendent of police
(SSP) Noida.
He said that during the sustained questioning of Sardar Mohinder
Singh Pandher and his domestic help Surendra Kohli alias Satish, the
duo identified the photographs of nine children whom they had
butchered to death.
The skeletons are suspected to be of 38 children, between 3-11 years
of age and mostly girls, who had gone missing while playing near a
water tank at Nithari village on the edges of this upscale suburban
town, in the past 21 months. The first kidnapping was reported in
March 2005.
"It is too early to reveal the details of the investigations. The
two men would to strangle the children, cut them into pieces and
bury the bodies in a two-foot deep ditch behind the house," said the
police official. "We have recovered from the house blades that must
have been used as cutters."
"Both the men have admitted to their crime," added Rathore.
The duo would lure the children into the white-colored two-storeyed
house by offering them sweets.
"A small room on the first floor of the house was used for cutting
the bodies before stacking them in bags and burying them behind the
house," he added.
"We do not think that the case was handled efficiently and
effectively by these officials, so necessary action had been
initiated against them,"
Rathore added.
He elaborated that the two inspectors who have been suspended were
R.N. Singh Yadav and Deepak Chaturvedi - it was during their tenure
at the Sector 20 police station when children were abducted,
sexually abused and killed.
He added that the present station house officer of the police
station, B.P. Singh Yadav, was transferred to police lines.
The officer said that the other three suspended officials are the
sub-inspectors attached to the police post of Nithari village. The
suspended sub-inspectors are K.P. Singh, Rajeev Balian and Vinod
Pandey.
In the continuing investigations, police have not ruled out the
angle of human organ trading too as distraught parents of missing
children thronged the road in front of a villa in Noida's Sector 31
from where the skulls were found.
The parents, mostly daily wagers, say police were callous in their
attitude to the missing person complaints they had filed, as they
were poor.
The businessman owner of the house, Mohinder Singh, and his domestic
help Surendra alias Satish, were arrested Friday on charges of
molesting and murdering children.
Police stumbled on the skeletons while investigating the murder of a
girl who was missing from Nithari village, adjoining the area, for
the past six months.
Police believe the two were psychopathic serial killers who would
lure children into the house, sexually abuse and strangle them and
later dump the bodies in a drain behind the house.
Amar Halder, a laborer,
sobs holding aloft the photograph of his 11-year-old niece who went
missing four months ago.
"We always suspected that someone from the village was involved in
the disappearance of our child but police did not take action even
after repeated complaints. I work in a factory and do not earn
enough to bribe the police. The police only want money from us.
Action should be taken against the policemen," he said.
The indifference of police to complaints of 38 children going
missing in the area is in sharp contrast to their alertness during
the abduction in November of the three-year-old son of a top
software firm from Noida's elite Sector 15A. The child was returned
five days later after the father reportedly coughed up Rs.5 million
and police held an elaborate press conference that was televised
nationally.
Says Sunil Biswas, whose eight-year-old daughter went missing while
plying near the house of Mohinder Singh: "We came to Delhi in search
of work for a better living, and ended losing our children like
this. Police did not take action only because they were the children
of poor families being kidnapped and murdered."
When the parents realized that police were not doing enough to look
for their children, they formed a team themselves to look for the
children.
"We went to Mumbai, Jaipur, Bharatpur, Agra and Kolakta in search of
our children as we suspected that they might have been forced into
the flesh trade," added Biswas, who works as a rickshaw puller in
Noida.
Anil Halder, a daily wage laborer whose 14-year-old daughter never
returned home, described the police apathy, saying: "When I went to
report about my missing daughter at the police station, the
officials told me not to bother them as my daughter had fled with
someone. They did not investigate it properly. Had they carried out
proper investigations, the lives of many children would have been
saved."
The village has a population of over 25,000 people, mostly migrants
from West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar who have come in search of
work in the Indian capital and adjoining cities.
According to reports, a doctor accused earlier of organ trade lives
in a house adjacent to the Sector 31 bungalow of Mohinder Singh. The
two houses are connected through a backyard passage, say some
locals.
"While Surendra initially confessed to killing six minor girls and
two boys, sustained interrogation of his employer Mohinder Singh led
to disclosures of the rape and killing of grown up girls too," a
police official said.
Police teams have been sent to Ludhiana to interrogate other members
of Mohinder Singh's family including his wife. His farmhouse near
Chandigarh has been raided in search of other missing girls and
boys.
Children's Killer
Preyed on Victims for Two Years
There Was
Nothing Suspicious about Pandher, say Neighbors
Kidney Racket Not Ruled Out in Children's
Killings
Police Did Not Act Because We Were Poor
Noida Police Unearth More Skeletons
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