Stepfather kills 12-year-old in Delhi, shares video with mother

NEw new new delhi : A 12-year-old boy was brutally murdered in nor'-east Delhi’s Shastri mungo park country, allegedly by his stepfather, who then recorded videos of the child’s body and sent them to the child’s mother along with a confession and threats, police and family members said on Friday.The disfigured body of the victim, a Class 7 student, was found in bushes near the Shastri Park Chowk early Friday morning with severe injuries to his head, face, and eyes, investigators said.His mother alleged that the accused – her second husband – had picked the boy and his 15-year-old brother from their school on Thursday afternoon. In the evening, he picked up the 14-year-old from a nearby football game and killed him. The immediate trigger for the crime, according to the family, was the woman telling the accused to leave their house after a fight. Investigators also said that they are looking into the stepfather wanting the kids to move back to a hostel, which they had recently left. According to police, the family learned of the 12-year-old’s murder on Friday morning when his mother received a WhatsApp video from an unkown number in which the accused was showing her son’s body. “He said, ‘Jaa apne bacche ko le ja (Go and fetch your son)’,” the mother told HT. “I saw my son lying in a pool of blood… His eye was gouged out. His head was smashed in.”“I thought I was going to collapse when I saw the video… He had earlier threatened to kill my son, but I never thought he would actually do something this horrific,” she said.Police were alerted about the case at around 9am reporting the boy’s body lying near a flyover. Officers rushed the boy to a nearby hospital, where he was declared dead, said deputy commissioner of police (northeast) Ashish Mishra.A case of murder under Section 103(1) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita has been registered at Shastri Park police station,The mother said she had previously filed a domestic abuse complaint against her husband but withdrew it after he promised to stop hurting her and her three sons from her first marriage.She said the fatal attack came after she asked him to leave the house following a fight two days earlier. “My son was tortured and put through hell. It’s all my fault. I had previously filed a complaint of domestic abuse against him (accused), but withdrew the case because he promised to not hurt me and my kids… Around two days back, we had another fight and I had asked him to leave… This made him very angry,” she said.“He hated us because we were his stepkids,” the boy’s elder brother said, describing a history of physical abuse. Relatives told police that they had long urged the mother to leave the man, whom they described as violent and unstable.Deputy commissioner of police (DCP) Mishra confirmed the boy’s identity and injuries but declined to share names, citing the ongoing investigation. Forensic teams have examined the scene, and police are working to trace the accused, who fled after the murder.The stepfather works as an e-rickshaw driver. The child’s biological father died in 2019, and his mother remarried in 2020. Raids are underway to locate and arrest the suspect.