Dhenkanal/Rourkela: Shockingly, four women were among five arrested for child-related crimes including the murder of a minor boy in Dhenkanal district and the abduction and sale of another child in Rourkela.
The arrests on Friday and Thursday come even as several cases of missing children found murdered have shaken Odisha recently.
In the first incident, a woman neighbour of a three-year-old boy was arrested on Friday, a day after the child’s body was found in a well at Khankira village under Nihalaprasad police limits in Dhenkanal district on Thursday morning.
Police sources said the accused woman, Bharati Sahoo, has confessed to suffocating the boy to death and then dumping his body in the well. The woman reportedly told police that she was involved in a dispute with the child’s parents, who are her neighbours.
In the other incident, three women and a man were arrested on charges of kidnapping a five-year-old boy in Rourkela and selling him for Rs 1 lakh. Also, the child was rescued and handed over to his family on Thursday.
A police official said the accused had abducted the boy from the Plant Site area in Rourkela on December 4. They then sold him to a woman from Medinipur in West Bengal.
The accused were identified as Ashraf Ali from Birajapalli, Santoshi Naik from Kendrapara and Nirmala Das from Gopabandhupalli in Rourkela. Another woman, Manuar Bibi from Rehmat Nagar in Medinipur, was also arrested for buying the minor boy.
Also Read: Unsafe Kids In Odisha: 3-Yr-Old Boy Found Dead In Dhenkanal, Minor Goes Missing In Gajapati
Also Read: Body Of Missing Minor Girl Found In Pond In Odisha’s Nayagarh
