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New Delhi: A 10-year-old boy was set on fire after he demanded compensation from members of a wedding party who were travelling in a car that hit his bicycle.
The police yesterday suspected a family rivalry behind the incident.
The incident occurred on Thursday evening in Sungapur village of Alipur area in north Delhi, when Sanjeev's bicycle was hit by a Qualis car carrying the wedding party, according to villagers.
The men were returning to Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, after attending a marriage at Bhkatarpur village, near Sungarpur. The boy too had attended that wedding.
When Sanjeev demanded that they pay for his damaged bicycle, the enraged men in the car first thrashed him and then dragged him 150-200 metres into a field. The men, who were reportedly drunk, tied his legs and hands and then dumped the boy on a heap of cow-dung patties and set them all ablaze. The villagers spotted the flames and rushed to douse the fire. They found the boy was charred from head to ankles.
"Villagers found the boy with legs tied inside the burning heap of cow-dung patties while they were sprinkling water to douse the flames. Later, they recognised the boy on the basis of his feet. The boy was immediately pulled out, but he was dead," said Charan Singh Kandra, the local legislator.
Meanwhile, senior police officials said the boy was first strangulated to death and it seems that in a bid to destroy his body and evidence, the assailants, who could be four-five in number, torched him.
"Dragging the boy over 150 metres from road to the field strongly suggests that an insider or people sharing enmity with him might be behind the act. We are probing the matter from all possible angles," said a senior investigating official.
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