Missing since Thursday, 14-year-old Nagpur boy murdered, body stuffed in sack

NAGPUR: Thirty-six hours after 14-year-old Atharva Nanore, a Class 8 student went missing from a Hanuman Jayanti procession at Gittikhadan, his decomposed body was found stuffed in a sack on Saturday afternoon at Bharatwada, 20km away from his home.

Atharva's school results were declared on Saturday and he passed with flying colours, compounding grief.Anger erupted in Gittikhadan and protests continued for at least 24 hours since the teen disappeared. Locals accused police of dragging their feet and laid siege to the police station. Protesters blocked the traffic junction and shopkeepers downed shutters in solidarity. The situation turned volatile, forcing cops to resort to lathicharge in Gittikhadan to clear the road.

Jolted into action, police tracked down the boy's body stuffed in a sugarcane sack at Bharatwada railway overbridge in Kalmeshwar police limits. The body was spotted around 3.30pm by a passerby who noticed blood oozing out from a sack and a portion of a white shirt slipping out of the edges. The sack usually used for ferrying sugarcane bore the ‘Kalmana Market' trademark and was placed against a pillar on the bridge sidewalk.

Preliminary investigations indicate Atharva was throttled to death with his limbs tied with rope. Kalmeshwar police, who suspect it was premeditated murder and referred the case to Gittikhadan, where a kidnapping case was already registered.

On Thursday, Atharva, the younger son of vegetable vendor Dilip, and housewife Rewati, joined the Hanuman Jayanti procession. Atharva told his friends he was stepping out for ice cream and was last seen around 10.35pm near a private hospital. CCTV footage captured him near an eatery in Friends Colony at 11:20pm, standing at an ice cream parlour near a nursing home with two others, who left the spot, but Atharva did not accompany them.

Sources said, Atharva was likely to have walked away willingly with the abductors, suggesting he knew them well. His captors appeared to know the locality well, using narrow bylanes to avoid CCTV cameras.

The family reported Atharva missing late on April 2 after he failed to return home. Despite searches by relatives, friends and police teams, there was no trace of the boy.

Dilip Nanore, besides running a vegetable stall, is also involved in property dealings and money lending. The family described itself as middle class and claimed it had no known enemies or recent disputes. "Atharva did not leave home angrily. He had no money with him and there was no fight or scolding," a family member said.

Senior officers, including police commissioner Ravinder Singal, joint CP Navinchandra Reddy, DCP Nityanand Jha, DCP Rahul Maknikar, ACP Abhijit Patil and senior inspector Vijay Dighe, are personally monitoring the case.

Singal spoke to the family and interrogated some suspects. Reddy camped daylong at Gittikhadan police station along with DCP Jha. Police have begun questioning family members and relatives based on cell phone location data.

Many of Atharva's close associates, like his father, are in the vegetable vending business, leading to local speculation the murder could be linked to someone within the trade circle, who had the boy's trust.

Some unverified rumours in the area mention the full-moon night and the family's Gowari background, with whispers of a possible human sacrifice, though police dismissed these as baseless. Atharva's elder brother Ansh, a Class 11 student, and his parents are inconsolable. "He was just a smiling boy," a relative told TOI.