14-yr-old’s mysterious death raises the Shaktiman bogey

MUMBAI, March 19: The mysterious death of a 14-year-old boy, who was found hanging by a dupatta from a slide in a Juhu garden last week, ...

MUMBAI, March 19: The mysterious death of a 14-year-old boy, who was found hanging by a dupatta from a slide in a Juhu garden last week, has sparked off a war of words between the boy’s father and the police with the former saying it was a case of murder and the latter suspecting it to be yet another one of those Shaktiman-inspired suicides. A case of murder, though has been registered with the Juhu police following the victim’s father’s insistence that his son was “not the types to commit suicide.”

Chinu Kumar, a resident of JVPD Scheme, Juhu was last seen playing with his younger brother outside Disco Garden near his Yoga Co-op Housing Society residence on the afternoon of March 7. Around 12.30 pm their father, Ramesh Kumar, came downstairs and asked the boys to come up for lunch. While the younger one came upstairs soon after, Chinu said he would come later.

When the boy did not return till 3 pm, Ramesh Kumar came down to look for him. Chinu was, however, nowhere to be seen outsidethe garden where Ramesh Kumar had left him playing. He then asked the garden security to open the gates and went inside only to find Chinu lying on the slide. On closer inspection the boy was found to be hanging by a dupatta, which was tied to the upper end of the slide.

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Ramesh Kumar rushed the boy to Cooper Hospital, where he was declared dead before admission. An autopsy examination revealed that the boy had died due to the constriction of neck.

While first a case of accidental death was registered at Juhu police station, it was later changed to that of murder after the victim’s father told police he had never seen the dupatta by which Chinu was found hanging by. A police officer revealed that Disco Garden is closed between 12 pm and 4 pm, and it was therefore surprising how the boy managed to get in. This apparently was also the reason for there being no eye-witnesses.

Juhu police is also not ruling out the possibility of Chinu’s death being inspired by Shaktiman, a popular Hindiserial on Doordarshan which is currently off the air. There have been several cases of children killing themselves hoping that Shaktiman would come and save them just as he does on television.

Ramesh Kumar, however, denies this possibility saying that Chinu, a standard six student of St Xaviers School, Vile Parle was a sensible boy and was never a big Shaktiman fan. He also insists that it wasn’t a case of suicide.

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“My son was good-natured and happy child and there was no reason for him to commit suicide,” he said today. Though the boy had a few arguments with his friends, this certainly couldn’t have been the reason for him to end it all, he added. There were no problems at home too. Though Chinu had failed in school last year, he had done quite well in the pre-term exams this time, the father said. “We had told him that he could appear privately for SSC exams next year and he had agreed to the idea,” he said.