Punjab: Man held for child murders

Muktsar: The Punjab Police have arrested one person for the murder of five children in Muktsar.

Mukesh Kumar has confessed to killing five children and hiding their bodies in a rice mill located in Muktsar and owned by Congress MP Jagmeet Brar.

Four of the bodies have already been found. Kumar has told the police that the fifth body is also buried in the rice mill, which the police are currently trying to exhume.

The murders, which were discovered on Tuesday, come close on the heels of the Nithari killings.

A resident of Muktsar, Babli, whose son has been missing for some time now had been hoping that none of the bodies was that of her son's. However, to her horror, not only was her son's body amongst the five, but also those of her aunt's son and her niece.

The bodies - which were found with their hands and feet tied - were accidentally discovered by some policemen on Tuesday evening.

"Every year in January, the Maghi mela is celebrated in Muktsar. The policemen who came here to guard the area wanted to stay in the rice mill. But when they went inside, they noticed foul smell coming out of a room. They immediately informed two of their colleagues who found the bodies of four children, half burnt and lying there in a semi-decomposed state,” Muktsar SSP Nageshwar Rao said.

The Central Forensic Science Lab (CFSL) team, which reached the spot on Wednesday morning, said that according to their preliminary observations, the children may have been sexually exploited before being killed.

CFSL investigator Ashwini Kalia said, “We have examined the physical part. It appears that all the bodies have been first strangulated.”

Jagmeet Brar had said that the fact that the bodies were found in his mill indicate that someone was trying to tarnish his reputation.

Brar, a member of the Congress' national Congress Working Committee (CWC), said he was ready for any probe, including by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), into the unfortunate killing of the children.

“This has something to do with political rivalry and to tarnish my image before the Assembly elections,” he said.

The gruesome killing of four underprivileged children has brought the fear of Nithari into the heart of Punjab. The question that every one is asking now is whether the police will ever find the scores of other missing children alive.

(With inputs from CNN-IBN's Jyoti Kamal)