Ransom plan ends in murder: Ex-guard held over killing of five-year-old in Hyderabad gated community
Hyderabad: Residents of Villa Orchids in Kowkoor staged a protest on Monday, October 12, demanding capital punishment for Vikram Kumar, the former security guard arrested in connection with the kidnapping and murder of a five-year-old girl. Holding placards and posters of the girl, they went to the office of the Deputy Commissioner of Police in Secunderabad. Relatives and acquaintances of the child also gathered outside the press conference where Malkajgiri Police Commissioner B Sumathi announced the arrest, and tried to enter the office.
Kumar, a native of Bihar’s Nalanda district, was apprehended at 4.30 pm on October 11, within 24 hours of the child’s disappearance. Police said he confessed during interrogation to a premeditated plan to extort ₹20 lakh from her parents.
How the investigation is proceeding
Bollaram police registered a kidnapping case on the complaint of the girl’s father, Milton Fernandes Moses, a research scientist. Ten special teams from the Malkajgiri Zone, the Special Operations Team, the Crimes wing and the Special Branch were deployed. Police also made inquiries at Secunderabad Railway Station and examined CCTV footage and mobile phone call data. Police questioned Kumar, searched his room and questioned his associates.
Police have said further details will be established through the legal process. The sections invoked have not been made public. Under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, murder and kidnapping for ransom are both punishable with death or life imprisonment. Police have not reported any sexual assault in this case, and no POCSO sections have been mentioned so far.
What happened?
The girl, identified as Aurelia, alias Monu, was a PP-2 student who usually cycled in the clubhouse games area at Villa Orchids around 6 pm and returned home by 7 pm. On October 10, she did not return. At about 7.45 pm, her father learnt that an unidentified caller had contacted the family, claiming to hold the child and demanding ₹20 lakh. The caller said he was in Secunderabad.
During an intensified search of the complex, police found the body in a water sump in the clubhouse cellar. ANI, citing police, reported that the girl’s hands and legs were found bound.
According to police, Kumar worked as a security guard at the complex from September 22 to October 6. He allegedly planned to kidnap the child for ransom and decided to kill her fearing he could not keep her in custody until the money was paid.
The incident has raised questions about background verification of security staff. Malkajgiri police have urged resident welfare associations to join the Mee Suraksha domestic helpers verification initiative and the Nenu Saitham 2.0 CCTV surveillance programme.
Locals call for harsher punishment
The residents’ demand for the harshest punishment comes against a national record of FIRs involving children and a courts system that converts few of them into convictions.
The National Crime Records Bureau recorded 1,77,335 cases of crime against children in 2023, a 9.2 per cent rise over 2022. Kidnapping and abduction accounted for 79,884 FIRs and the POCSO Act for 67,694. POCSO registrations rose from 63,414 in 2022 to 67,694 in 2023, an increase of seven per cent. The POCSO figure works out to about 185 FIRs a day. The Child Rights and You analysis of the same data put the overall average at 486 crimes against children every day, or one every three minutes.
The same NCRB data recorded 1,219 murders of children in 2023, of which 89 were linked to rape or POCSO violations. That is roughly three child murders a day nationwide.
What happens to those FIRs in court is where the numbers narrow. In 2022, 2,39,188 of 2,68,038 POCSO cases were awaiting trial, a pendency rate of 89.2 per cent. At the end of 2023, 2,62,089 POCSO cases were pending in courts. The conviction rate in POCSO cases fell from 35 per cent in 2019 to 29 per cent in 2023, and in cases disposed of by Fast Track Special Courts it stood at 19 per cent in 2024. The same analysis also noted a clear mismatch between the number of POCSO FIRs recorded by the NCRB and the number of POCSO cases registered for trial as reported by the National Judicial Data Grid.
The gap is visible at state level. In Karnataka, State Crime Records Bureau data showed that of 10,247 POCSO cases reported between January 2022 and November 2024, only 179 ended in convictions, and 6,945 were pending trial.
The killing of Aurelia highlights risks faced by children even within gated communities, often presumed safe. While residents demand the harshest punishment for the accused, the case also highlights the need for stricter background verification of security personnel, stronger surveillance and faster investigations.
