Bengaluru: In a shocking incident, a 29-day-old infant was smothered to death at a house in North Street near Neelasandra on Friday evening. The baby was found murdered and hidden under an iron cot along with toys, it is said. Soon after the episode came to light, the Ashoknagar police nabbed the child’s father, grandfather and uncle.
The detained have been identified as C Karthik, 35 (father), Aravind 32, (uncle) and Chittar Raj, 64 (grandfather). It is suspected that a family feud may have led to the coldblooded murder of the child and an autopsy report has confirmed that the baby was strangled to death.
However, while the police were suspecting Karthik, he turned up and filed a complaint against his father Chittar Raj, a retired army man and his sibling Aravind, a labourer at the HAL. The murder had taken place in the residence of Karthik’s parent, which is the ground floor of the building where Karthik lived.
Karthik had informed in his complaint that he married Stella going against his entire family in February 2018. However, things went worse when Karthik’s family discovered that Karthik had converted to Christianity to marry Stella. This had forced the couple to live separately in their Neelasandra house. Stella delivered twins on November 22. However, on Friday, Karthik had left one of the twins with his mother and they had to take the other twin to doctor for medication.
The complaint mentions that on reaching home at 5.15 pm, Stella had left the sick infant in the drawing room and proceeded to bedroom to feed the healthy twin. Karthik, who had ventured out to get medicines returned home at 5.45 pm and realised that the ailing child had gone missing. When all search operations failed, they alerted the police about the same. The police found the unconscious child under a cot Karthik’s parent’s house. They rushed the baby to the Bowring Hospital, but, the child was declared brought dead.
Karthik, meanwhile, suspects his father and brother might have killed the infant and has sought action against them. All the family members have been detained for questioning and since there are lot of loopholes in Karthik’s complaint, he too will be questioned, sources said.
