MP: 5-Yr-Old Twins Found Dead 12 Days After Abduction; 4 Police Personnel Suspended For Negligence

5-year-old twin brothers Shreyansh and Priyansh, sons of a medicated oil businessman Brijesh Rawat, were kidnapped at gunpoint by masked men from a crowded school bus in Madhya Pradesh’s Satna district, Chitrakoot town, on February 12. 12 days later, both of them were found murdered in the Yamuna river, in Central UP’s Banda district. The twins were class I students of a public school in Chitrakoot.

The incident and arrests

Six men have been arrested for the kidnapping and double murder, including one from MP’s Chitrakoot town and five from UP’s Banda and Hamirpur districts. All the perpetrators are aged between 20 and 26. A joint operation by the MP and UP police lead to the arrest of the six men, including 26-year-old Ramkesh Yadav, who was a private tutor of the twins. He gave them tuitions at their residence in Chitrakoot district’s Karvi, reported The New Indian Express.

The other arrested men have been identified as Padam Shukla, Pinta Yadav, Raju Dwivedi, Lucky Singh Tomar and Rohit Dwivedi. Shukla is suspected to be the mastermind behind the kidnapping and murder and is a local Bajrang Dal convener.

On the day of the kidnapping, the abductors took the abductees on a bike and fled away, with Ramrajya written on the number plate. A car with BJP’s flag on the bonnet was also used. The whole incident was caught on CCTV, reported Deccan Herald.

Satna police said that the abductors had demanded a ransom of Rs two crore but the twins’ family had only given them Rs 20 lakh.

Rewa zone Inspector general of police Chanchal Shekhar said that the father got connected to the twins through internet calling a couple of days after the abduction. The men killed the twins by tying their hands and legs and drowning them in the Yamuna river, possibly fearing that they would identify their tutor. The slain kids knew all the abductors, and one of them was an employee of the school they studied in. The accused are not professional criminals, however, the hunger for fast money made them resort to this terrible crime.

With the news of the murder reaching Chitrakoot, several people came on on the roads to protest. Shopkeepers kept their shutters down, and despite police deployment, some shops and public properties were vandalised by a mob. At some point, police had to fire tear gas at the crowd. Following this, police had to impose prohibitory orders under Section 144 of CrPC in the area.

MP DGP VK Singh had declared a reward of Rs 50,000 for providing information related to the case. A local resident in UP’s Banda district on February 21, whose cell phone the abductors had used to make the ransom call, provided police with images of one of the bikes used in the crime, ultimately helping them catch the six perpetrators.

According to sources, the perpetrators, even after being arrested, kept telling the police that the boys were alive. “They took the cops to Allahabad district and Banda district, but it was the questioning of Bachelor of Engineering (BE) student Vicky Tomar which led to the disclosure that the twins had been thrown into the river on February 21. After this teams of UP and MP police retrieved both the bodies tied to stones from Yamuna river in Banda district early on Sunday,” a key source said.

Police have recovered the ransom money that the father had paid to the abductors.

Police personnel suspended for negligence, Shivraj Chouhan demands CBI probe

On February 25, Monday, four police personnel were suspended for negligence in the kidnapping and murder case. The suspended policemen have been identified as head constable Shiv Prasad Bagri, constable Chandrakant Pandey, Nayagaon police station in-charge KP Tripathi and traffic sub-inspector Sudhanshu Tiwari, reported NDTV.

Further, a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe has been demanded by former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Chouhan into the case. “I would like to tell the Chief Minister (Kamal Nath) to give this case to CBI,” Chouhan said. He also met the family of the slain boys, NDTV reported.

Mentioning that a criminal has no party, religion or caste, he tweeted, “After getting to know that the children were no more, IG Reeva said a particular’s party flag was on them who took them. To say that they were with a particular organisation proves that they (police) want to twist the incident to a new direction, so that confusion remains and they can hide their own failure.”

The abduction, according to police, could be the result of a rivalry that the children’s father had with a gang. They also suspect that just after the kidnapping, the brothers were taken to the jungles by a gang called “Babuli Kol”.

The sheer brutality of the case is horrifying and unnerving, and The Logical Indian urges authorities to take strict action against the perpetrators.

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