Senior’s role suspected in schoolboy’s torture

LUCKNOW: Four youths kidnapped a 13-year-old student of a missionary school, tonsured his head and tortured him in a moving car in Aliganj on Friday. The boy managed to escape and recounted the horrifying experience on Saturday. Police lodged FIR of kidnapping and suspect it was a case of bullying by seniors. The boy doesn’t want to go to school anymore.Worried about boy’s safety, his father also wants to shift him to another school.
The boy left his Aliganj home on bicycle around 7am to attend school. As he reached near the Aliganj mini stadium he was intercepted by a blue Maruti Omni van. Four unidentified persons pulled him and his bicycle inside the van and gagged him with a piece of cloth.
He told TOI, the four kidnappers were masked with handkerchiefs so he couldn’t recognise them. But, he said, one of them was in school uniform. “They told me they were doing this to punish me for lodging complaint against seniors,” he said. The boy had a few days ago informed college authorities about an incident in which some seniors bullied juniors outside the campus.
“They asked me to give mobile phone number of my father and taunted me saying since I was fond of complaining, they wanted to see where my father will complain about what they were doing to me,” he said, adding, “When I refused, the kidnappers tonsured a part of my head with a blade. They also beat me with iron rods and injured my arm with the blade. The senior boy stopped, but the other three continued to torture me,” he said.
The group parked the van in a park in sector L of Aliganj and left for some work. The boy managed to untie the rope tying his hands and sought help of a street vendor to inform his mother about the incident. The boy’s father alerted cops and FIR under kidnapping charges was lodged against the unidentified group. He has asked police to add attempt to murder charges as well.
Father of the boy, a businessman, met the school principal and requested him to furnish a transfer certificate so that he could get the boy enrolled to another school. “I am worried about his safety. I don’t care if my son has to sit at home for this academic year. It is horrifying to imagine what he has gone through,” he said.
Aliganj police station sub-inspector Arun Chaturvedi said, “We are trying to identify kidnappers on the basis of hints given by the victim.”