Human sacrifice of seven-year-old boy
From Our Correspondent
TURA: Close to two months on the run from authorities in Meghalaya over an arrest warrant against him, the self-styled god man or tantrik from Mankachar, Lukman Haqib has finally been nabbed. He surrendered to Tura police on Thursday in the West Garo Hills district headquarters and was immediately placed under arrest.
The tantrik is the prime accused in the gruesome murder of seven-year-old Krishna Singh, a crime that had all the hallmarks of a human sacrifice.
The body of the young boy who went missing from the main BSF campus in Praharinagar, Tura, on October 5 during the Durga Puja celebrations was retrieved from a thick undergrowth at the back of the campus the next morning.
His body had multiple piercing injuries and a post mortem report concluded that the child died from internal injuries to his organs in what is believed to be a ritualistic killing.
The tantrik who had been on the run for the last 56 days had to finally surrender after all options including an attempt to obtain anticipatory bail fell through.
Aware of the red corner arrest notice out on him, the god man tried to get his brother to move the high court for anticipatory bail. He abandoned the idea after realizing that police teams were in wait for his brother at both Shillong and Guwahati which would have led to him eventually.
With no other way out the tantrik sent feelers to the authorities in Tura expressing his keenness to surrender. He was brought to Tura where police placed him under arrest for the murder of Krishna Singh.
Prior to his arrest two BSF jawans who were found in the company of the god man was arrested and later granted bail. Hawildar Chandrawan of 121 Battalion and Constable Babu Khan of 162 Battalion of the BSF were arrested and sent to jail for their alleged involvement in the crime. Both jawans accepted the fact that they knew the tantrik but denied having a hand in the murder. Police investigations reveal that the murder could not have happened without the involvement of BSF personnel from inside the camp who knew the child and his family.
Assam police covered up Tantrik whereabouts: Lies told by the Assam police that they had no information or knowledge on the whereabouts of the Tantrik has been exposed with the arrest of the self-styled god man.
Prime accused in the murder of 7-year-old Krishna Singh, tantrik Lukman Haqib of Mankachar town has reportedly told police interrogators in Tura that he was all along in Mankachar town and had never crossed the border into Bangladesh to seek shelter.
For most part of the time he was crisscrossing from one relatives house to another and had even stayed at his own residence, a police source revealed.
Since the disappearance of the god man, Mankachar police had claimed that the accused crossed over to Bangladesh through the ‘porous’ border from Assam. This was also substantiated by a senior Meghalaya police official based in Tura even as the BSF out rightly rejected the reports.
The frontier headquarters of the BSF in Shillong issued a strong rebuttal that the border in that sector was sealed and allegations of infiltrating across could not be substantiated. The BSF had pointed an accusing finger on the Assam police for deliberately ‘shielding’ the accused god man despite knowing the seriousness of the crime.
A local politician from the area had even given support to the accused by garnering public support in favour of the tantrik that led to the storming of the police station in Mankachar to pressurize the police to release him on a PR Bond.