RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, March 9: The Ranchi police arrested Sanjeev Kumar Panda (27) for killing eight-yr-old Shaurya Kumar, the only son of a RJD supremo Lalu Yadav’s bailer Raju Gope and a class II student of D.A.V. Gandhinagar.
Panda kidnapped the boy on March 3 from Edalhatu under the Bariatu police station area in the Jharkhand capital with an intention to collect some ransom to get rid of his loan but when it became difficult for him to control the boy raising alarm for rescue, he killed him on the same day. Killing the boy Panda dumped him in a jute bag in a pond at Lalgutwa, about 12km from the place of abduction under the Nagri police station.
Panda’s arrest could be possible on Wednesday after police recovered the boy’s body on March 7 and constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to identify and arrest the culprit. Panda, a native of Koderma district, confessed his crime and police on the basis of his confessional statement recovered the items he had used to kill and disposed of the boy’s body.
Senior Superintendent of Police Kaushal Kishore shared the breakthrough at a press conference today. He said the police had been active since March 4 after Gope registered a case of abduction at Bariatu police station on the basis of CCTV footage showing the boy being taken in a white car after he talked sometime with its driver.
The SSP said Panda was an old tenant of Gope and well known to the boy.
