New Delhi: Two years after a child was buried, exhumation of his grave has been ordered by a Delhi court to enable a DNA examination to establish the identity of the victim in a kidnap and murder case.
The court passed the order for exhuming the remains of the child after the DNA from the body did not match the DNA of the parents of a six-year-old missing boy, who was allegedly kidnapped in 2012.
Additional sessions judge directed that the exhumation proceedings be videographed and conducted after taking due care of the “social, religious and personal sensibilities”.
“Though the correctness and authenticity of this (DNA) report has been challenged before court by the prosecution yet, assuming that the same is correct, then the entire case put forth by the prosecution against the accused collapses.
“The two questions which then arise are firstly — where is the missing child and, secondly — who is the child whose skeleton has been found on the banks of the drain,” the judge said.
The court was hearing a case in which the prosecution has alleged that an accused, one Ashish, had kidnapped his landlord’s minor son in 2012 in an act of revenge.
According to police, the tenant was in an illicit relationship with a woman, who is a co-accused in the case, and his landlord was against it. Fed up with the interference in his personal life by the landlord, the accused kidnapped his son to teach him a lesson.
Later, a body was found near a drain in Swaroop Nagar which police said was that of the missing child.
But during the trial, a DNA test which was conducted upon court orders to establish the identity of the body showed that the result did not match with the kidnapped boy’s parents.
The court, which was hearing final arguments in the case, deferred the proceedings.
The Judge said that he had planned to defer the case in light of the evidence produced and ord-ered the exhumation of the child.
