He killed their elder son, now they live in fear

NEW DELHI: "I will never let my younger son dance. I don't even let him go out much. I want to keep him close because, after Swapnesh, he is all I have," says Madhu Gupta, whose 13-year-old son was allegedly abducted and killed by a juvenile for a ransom of Rs 60,000 last September. Months later, the accused, an aspiring dancer obsessed with participating in a dance reality show, killed an elderly woman in south Delhi.
Swapnesh was a student in the accused's dance class. The older boy and his girlfriend allegedly abducted Swapnesh from outside his school, strangled him and threw his body off a hill before making the ransom call.
Not much has changed in Swapnesh's house, a rented room in a cramped alley in Badarpur, but the family's fear is palpable. "I fear leaving my family alone at night. At work I keep thinking of their safety. It's hard to live this way," says Swapnesh's father Rajesh Gupta, a security guard who earns Rs 9,000 a month.
"He has killed twice in four or five months but gets away only because he claims to be a juvenile," said Madhu. She had found out through Facebook that the juvenile had been set free. "A neighbour showed me he had uploaded a picture to his Facebook profile in November. I was shocked at his early release. There wasn't a sign of remorse on his face in that picture."
"He knows where we live. We were scared that he would try to harm us," said Rajesh. They came to know about the second murder and the juvenile's detention only on Thursday night.
"We started getting calls from the media. It feels like someone has reopened our wounds. We were trying to move on in life but are now back to the same trauma. Where is justice?" said Madhu.
The couple accuses police of delaying investigations. "After numerous trips to different lawyers, we found one who was willing to take up our case for free. But he hasn't been able to build a case yet because police have not given him the chargesheet. We are uneducated people and do not understand how these things work. What we do understand is that justice is being delayed and that has led to another crime," said Rajesh.
"I have given up hope of getting help from police. When I asked them why he had been let out, they shouted back at me," said Madhu. They allege that the accused is not really a juvenile.
"We got hold of his Class X certificate that gives his birth year as 2001, making him 15. His Aadhar card says he is 22 but police say he is 17," said Rajesh.
The family came to Delhi from Bihar in 2001. Rajesh had earlier told TOI he wanted to go back because of the hard life here, but had stayed on only to educate his sons. The family wanted to enrol Swapnesh in a government school.
"We are victims of a tyrannical juvenile law. His mind is mature for his claimed age but he was neither punished nor counselled. Our only hope is my six-year-old son, but how will he grow if we keep him confined for fear of losing him?" said Rajesh.