Two people were arrested in connection with the abduction and murder of the 13-year-old son of a jeweller, police said on Tuesday. Utkarsh Verma, a Class VIII student, was abducted on November 18 while returning from school in Anand Vihar in East Delhi. His body was recovered near a drain on the outskirts of Delhi a day later.
Pratap Singh Sisodia, 22 and Siddharth Sharma, 24 were arrested from East Delhi’s Geeta Colony and Gandhi Nagar area, respectively on Tuesday morning. According to Joint Commissioner of Police Sanjay Beniwal, Sisodia, with an intention to earn some quick money, hatched a conspiracy along with Sharma and abducted Utkarsh near his residence. Sharma wanted to start his own auto parts dealership and was in need of cash. Sisodia too was in dire need of money. He needed Rs20 lakh to buy back the partnership of a call centre.
“Sisodia was known to the victim and lured Utkarsh by saying that some accident had occurred at his (victim) home and his father asked him (Sisodia) to pick him up,” said Beniwal.“They took the boy on a motorcycle to Sisodia’s rented accommodation in Geeta Colony, where he lives with his female friend,” Beniwal added.
“In the evening when the boy started crying, they gave him a cold drink spiked with sedatives, strangled him and then dumped his body in a drain near the house,” he said.
During interrogation of several people known to boy’s family, Sisodia was found to be behaving suspiciously. He broke down on sustained interrogation and confessed to the crime. The plan was to initially abduct his 8-year-old cousin Vibhu, but seeing how Mukesh Verma had deep pockets, the duo decided to kidnap Utkarsh instead sensing a meatier ransom payout. Police also said Sisodia had learned acting in Mumbai last year and is good at modulating his voice. He made two calls to victim’s parents and demanded Rs1 crore as ransom. Sharma had helped him in procuring five SIM cards on fake IDs from Krishna Nagar and Chinese cell phones from Shanti Mahal, police said.
After his acting career failed, Sisodia, opened a call centre in Noida with the help of his father, who is a builder who had incidentally helped Utkarsh’s father in getting a house.