Minor boy’s decomposed body found in tank

Bhubaneswar: Tension prevailed at Ratanpur village in Delanga block of Puri district on Monday fol-lowing the recovery of decomposed body of a minor boy from a septic tank. The boy had been missing since April 15. Police have detained a suspect, Pravakar Sahoo alias Bapi, a distant relative of the minor victim, in the case.

Meanwhile, the enraged villagers on Monday ransacked the house of the accused person, demanding capital punishment for him. The villagers have been accusing the police of negligence in the incident and have demanded a speedy trial in the case. As per sources, the deceased, Ashirbad Sahoo, the 11-year-old minor son of Manas Kumar Sahoo, had gone missing while playing near his residence at Ratanpur village under Delanga police limits in the evening on April 15.

The family members later lodged a missing report at Delanga police station, suspecting the accused’s role in Ashirbad’s missing. The police’s failure to trace the whereabouts of the missing boy enraged the locals as thousands of villagers, led by BJD leader and former MLA Rudra Pratap Maharathy, staged a road blockade at Delanga market on Sunday.

The protesters, alleging the local police’s callous attitude and incompetence, demanded a Crime Branch probe into the missing case. The local police had earlier detained the accused following the allegations of the deceased’s family members, but later released him without taking any action against the accused, which further enraged the villagers. Following the protest and road blockade, Puri police intensified their probe into the case and appre-hended the suspect Bapi from Tangi area of Khurda district on Sunday. The accused reportedly con-fessed to the police about committing the crime and dumping the minor’s body in the septic tank.

The police later recovered the decomposed body of the deceased from the septic tank of a local vil-lager late on Sunday. Locals alleged that the accused committed unnatural sex with the minor and later killed him to destroy evidence.

A senior police official on Monday said the accused had a business rivalry with the deceased’s father for a long time and might have killed the minor for it. Reacting to the allegations of unnatural sex as the reason behind the ghastly murder, the senior police official said the postmortem report of the deceased can confirm these allegations.