Guwahati, August 10: City police have arrested a man accused of “abducting and murdering” a Class 10 student in the Bonda area here and gathered vital information during interrogation of the arrested accused, officials said on Thursday.
Notably, the body of a school student, identified as Nitish Kumar, was found lying in a dense forest under mysterious circumstances on Wednesday evening.
The arrested accused person has been identified as Abhishek Baruah, who was employed as a cook at the Accountant General’s office canteen in the Beltola area here.
Revealing the information gathered during interrogation of the accused, Guwahati police commissioner Diganta Barah informed mediapersons here on Thursday that the accused and the victim (both residents of Beltola here) knew each other since 2019.
“Both were acquainted to each other through an online gaming portal in 2019. Gradually, interactions grew. In 2022, the accused wanted to start a small restaurant and had borrowed Rs 30000 from the victim on the condition that the money is repaid with an interest of Rs 10,000 within a week. The accused had fulfilled his promise,” the police official said.
The commissioner of police further disclosed that Abhishek Baruah had previously siphoned off Rs 16 lakh from his father’s account. “The accused had used the money to distribute amounts against interest from various individuals. The victim, Nitish Kumar, who was a habitual borrower and an investor in crypto currency, was drawn into this web when Abhishek disclosed his bank balance,” Barah said.
“A cycle of transactions followed thereafter, with Nitish borrowing money from Abhishek, pledging to repay double the borrowed sum. However, Nitish’s debts accumulated to Rs 90,000 but according to the accused, he (Nitish) never returned the money,” the police official said.
“However, on Wednesday, Nitish had decided to skip school and called Abhishek for a trip to a waterfall near Amching reserve forest in the Bonda area. During their outing, the accused had carried a sword-like weapon with the idea of clearing the foliage in the dense forest during their trip on a scooty. But it so happened that a heated argument over the borrowed money ensued and the accused, in a fit of rage, struck the victim with the weapon multiple times to kill him on the spot,” the commissioner of police said.
Motive behind the murder
“The accused had made up his mind to kill the victim (Nitish) after the latter started blackmailing him over a period of time asking for more money. The victim came to know about the illegal money transfer from the bank account of the accused’s father. In course of time, Nitish also came across intimate pictures (on the photo gallery of the accused’s mobile phone) of the accused with his girlfriend and threatened to make them viral. Such blackmailing had put the accused under tremendous mental pressure, triggering a fit of rage and eventually killing Nitish,” the police official revealed.
The city police commissioner further revealed that after the accused came to know that the victim’s family had got in touch with the police (after a phone call was made to the accused by the parents about their not returning home), he tried to give the incident the colour of abduction and made a ransom call to the parents at 2.45pm on Wednesday.
“As of now, we have no other person involved in the murder,” he said.
Meanwhile, the city police have seized the two-wheeler the accused had taken to the place of occurrence of the incident.
