Nagpur: In a shocking crime driven by greed, three men allegedly kidnapped and murdered an 11-year-old boy to extort money from his father.
The victim, Jitu Yuvraj Sonekar of Ward No. 2, Khaparkheda, was a Class VI student of Shankarrao Chavan School. On Monday (Sept 15) morning, he went to school but never returned home. His family filed a missing complaint after failing to trace him.
On Wednesday (Sept 17) morning, a goat herder discovered Jitu’s body stuffed in a gunny bag in bushes near Chankapur, Savner. Police said he had head and facial injuries and had been strangled.
Investigations revealed that Rahul Pal, along with associates Yash Verma and Arun Bharti, all residents of Chankapur and known to Jitu’s father, had planned the kidnapping to demand ₹5 lakh. Jitu willingly accompanied Rahul in a white car (MH-40/A-7997) on Monday evening. The trio drove him through several routes—including Annamode, Koradi Temple Road, Waregaon, and Bina Sangam—before strangling him inside the car between 11 p.m. and midnight near an AB Incline coal mine road.
They initially kept the body in an illegally occupied WCL quarter in Chankapur but later dumped it in nearby shrubs, hiding the gunny bag under a sand heap to mask the odour. Police recovered the car, school bag and the bag used for disposal.
Officers disclosed that Jitu’s parents live separately and his father recently received proceeds from farmland in Madhya Pradesh, which the accused knew about. Acting on the mother’s suspicion of Rahul, police detained him, leading to the arrest of all three under charges of murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy.
The probe, supervised by Khaparkheda station in-charge Harish Rumkar and Zone-5 Crime Branch, is ongoing.
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