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Bhubaneshwar: The coach of a 6-year-old boy who ran a marathon last year in an attempt to set a world record was arrested yesterday and charged with torturing the boy, police said.
Biranchi Das was arrested and charged after the boy's mother said she discovered scars on the body of her son, Budhia Singh, said police official Sarat Chandra Sahu in Bhubaneshwar, the capital of Orissa.
Singh became an instant celebrity in record-crazy India when he ran 65 kilometres at the age of 4 - a feat that also drew immediate, widespread condemnation from medical officials and child rights activists.
The boy's mother, Sukanti Singh, had supported Das' efforts to train her son, but yesterday she alleged the man was severely mistreating the boy.
"Biranchi was beating him up regularly," said Sukanti Singh.
"He even once tied Budhia up from a ceiling fan and threw hot water on his body."
Budhia Singh had been living with the coach.
The boy was taken to a hospital for examinations, and was assigned security guards after his mother claimed Das has threatened their lives.
'Conspiracy'
Das denied the allegations, calling the charges "a conspiracy against me hatched by the state government's child welfare department".
The department had condemned the boy's participation in marathons as "torture" in May, a month before police stopped him from making a 100-kilometre walk in scorching heat across east India. In 2006, Singh attempted to run a 70-kilometre marathon, sparking protests from child rights activists. Doctors stopped him after 65 kilometres, when he showed signs of extreme exhaustion.
They found the child to be undernourished, anemic and under cardiac stress.
Sukanti Singh, who was once allegedly close to selling her son to another villager for Rs800 (Dh72) also complained that Das was not fairly sharing the money he had earned from the boy's long-distance exploits.
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