Kidnapped Mayur Vihar schoolboy found killed

Vishal, a class X student of Ryan’s International School, Mayur Vihar, whose strangulated body was discovered inside a holdall by the Link Road police at Ghaziabad yesterday, was kidnapped from near his house.

He had gone for his Sanskrit tuition at Yojna Vihar. In the interval between two classes, he was approached by a man on a Kinetic Honda scooter. They spoke for a short while and his tutor’s nephew Shashank, his neighbours Tina and Harjyot saw Vishal going on the scooter with the man.

When the body was found, his legs were tied. His mother’s wrist watch, which he was wearing on the day, was missing. It is being suspected that he was killed barely hours after he disappeared with the man. Other than the telephone call and that man on the scooter, there are no other clues.

The description of the unidentified man matches Vishal’s former tutor, the relatives say. “He is the son of a bureaucrat and lives a lavish lifestyle,” says Gopal Alag, a relative.

Additional DCP U.K. Chaudhri said: “The clues give the impression that the kidnapper was known to Vishal. And this is the vital clue we are working on.”

Vishal’s parents who were away in Shimla returned the day he went missing. His father Vijay Bhandari runs a shop in Gokhale Market.

The family and Vishal’s friends are still in a state of shock. Vishal’s friends Saurab, Vishal, Deepender and Ranjan say he used to share everything with them. “No matter where he went, he used to tell us and share everything with us. But he was particular about his routine. If he was playing and if it was 7pm, nobody could stop him from going home.”

Vishal’s school sports instructor D.N. Dubey remembers him as a bright, intelligent, sober and sincere student. “The day after he went missing we had gone to his school and made inquiries to find out whether any student was absent. When we came to know that some of them were missing we went to their houses to find out. But they were home,” says Shyam Kapoor, a friend of Vishal’s father. “We were sitting near the phone and expecting a ransom call but there was no such call.” The relatives also searched the entire area, all the hospitals and bus stands. They alleged that the police did not make much efforts to trace the missing boy.

A senior district police officer said they could not do justice to the case due to a spate of kidnappings in the district. In the other two cases there were ransom calls so they had attracted more attention.