In a shocking incident, two 6-year-old twin brothers who were kidnapped on gunpoint from their school bus in broad daylight from Madhya Pradesh’s Chitrakoot were found dead in a river in Uttar Pradesh’s Banda, 11 days after the kidnap.
The Madhya Pradesh police have held five men, including the possible mastermind of the abduction, who gave private tuitions to the twins.
Two masked men had barged into a school bus with guns and dragged the two brothers, Sreyansh and Priyansh Rawat, sons of a businessman in Chitrakoot on February 12. Both the boys studied in kindergarten.
Police sources said the family had paid Rs 20 lakh in ransom to the kidnappers on February 19 but they raised the demand to Rs 1 crore instead of releasing the hostages. The boys were killed on February 21.
“The kidnappers took the ransom and then killed the two children,” Chitrakoot senior police officer Chanchal Sekhar told reporters today. The children were tied together to a stone and drowned in the river, the officer said.
Just after the kidnapping, the police suspected a gang known as “Babuli Kol” took the brothers to the jungles.
The gruesome murder of these minors triggered widespread protests in Chitrakoot where a large number of people came out on the road and ransacked the Jankikund shopping complex, close to where the children were kidnapped. The mob attacked the properties in the complex and set some shops on fire. MP Police have fired tear gas shells to disperse the mob getting out of control.
Protesters also vented their anger at the school where the boys were studying and pelted stones at the school building and employees of the trust which runs it.
Marka Station House Officer Zahid Hussain said that the Special Task Force arrested four people, who are allegedly involved in the crime and they led the police to the site from where they had thrown the children into the water. “After a night-long search, the bodies were found near a temple in Bakul village of Marka police area in Madhya Pradesh Sunday morning. The bodies were sent for post mortem,” Hussain added.
Soon a political slugfest started brewing over the gruesome kidnapping and murder of the twins. Though the incident occurred in Madhya Pradesh, the government blamed the UP authorities since the dead bodies were found in a river in Uttar Pradesh. A senior minister of Kamal Nath government put the blame for the killing more on the UP government and police and even demanded the resignation of UP CM Yogi Adityanath in the matter.
“A joint operation of MP and UP police was underway to rescue the kids since the bodies have been found in UP’s territory, hence the UP police and government are largely to be blamed”, said MP Law minister PC Sharma in Bhopal on Sunday.
Lately, after Congress bigwig Kamal Nath has taken Madhya Pradesh’s reigns in his hand, the criminalised nexus in MP has been in the rise. The series of political murders are especially accentuating, with several BJP leaders in Madhya Pradesh being targetted.
The beginning of the year witnessed the brutal murder of an RSS worker from Ratlam. This was reportedly the fourth murder the state witnessed within a span of 10 days. Prior to this several BJP leaders have fallen prey to this criminal counterplot.
Chhatrapal Singh Rawat, a BJP worker from Madhya Pradesh, was found murdered in Gwalior. Another BJP office-bearer, Magan Siddiqui was seriously injured after he was reportedly attacked in Jabalpur. Similarly, Balwadi BJP leader Manoj Thackeray was found murdered in a field after he had gone for a morning walk. Prior to that, Mandsaur BJP leader Prahlad Badhwar was shot dead in full public view.
