Man Killed 4-Year-Old Boy After Raping Him, 'Helped' Police During Investigation, Arrested

A man was arrested Wednesday, 11 months after he raped and killed his four-year-old neighbor in Bangalore, the capital city of the southern Indian state of Karnataka.

On Jan.1, the accused, identified as 50-year-old Narada Bhagat, took the victim to a groove after luring the boy with chocolates. The accused then raped the boy and in order to stop the victim from screaming, the man gagged him. The boy eventually died of suffocation. The accused then left the body in the groove and returned home. The boy’s parents found their son’s decomposed body two days later and filed a police complaint.

As police were investigating the case, Bhagat acted as a sympathizer for the boy’s family and “helped” the police during the investigation. The police did not suspect him at all.

“The autopsy report indicated that the boy had been sexually assaulted before the murder. The family of the victim, who is also from Bihar [North Indian state], was close to the accused. Since they had difficulty in filing the complaint and communicating with the police as they did not know the local language, Bhagat stepped in to help them. The accused has been living in the city for the last 25 year s and is well-versed in the local language and he made full use of this fact,” a police officer said.

During investigation, police found there was a drug peddler in the area who forced people to sleep with him instead of taking money from them for drugs.

“The informants did not know that Bhagat was the drug peddler. The police started looking out for drug addicts and upon questioning some of them, they confessed that Bhagat had forced them to sleep with him. We were shocked to know that this was the same man who was helping with the translation,” the police officer added.

Police detained the accused who confessed to the crime during interrogation. The man was taken into custody and remained in jail as of Thursday night. Police said the man stayed alone in the city and his wife had died two decades ago.