Boy chained,starved by kin breaks free

Anubhav Maurya,15,had been living in his parental house in Makhtapur village of Sitapur with his grandfather Natha Ram Maurya,65. About three weeks ago,their relative Suraj Maurya took Anubhav to his house in the Naurangabad locality of Lakhimpur Kheri. Anubhav complained to the city magistrate that Suraj,along with a neighbour Kailash,tormented him with intentions of grabbing his property,as his parents,Nand Kishore and Chamma Devi,were dead. Anubhav added that when he resisted the physical torture,Suraj got shackles made by a blacksmith,Aftab and put them around his neck and limbs. Anubhav escaped from the house on Thursday morning,boarded a bus and with the help of passengers reached the office of the Sitapur City Magistrate B L Saroj.

“We have arrested the accused for subjecting a minor to inhuman treatment,” said Piyush Mordia,Superintendent of Police,Sitapur. The police,however,ruled out the possibility that the boy was being tortured for property because he his two older brothers were studying in Lucknow with the support of the accused relatives. The grandfather says he had sent him with a relative to isolate him from the bad company that he had fallen into,said the police.

“ Natha told us that Anubhav was staying with him and used to help him on the fields. He also said,that since the past few months,Anubhav had joined some anti-social elements and had been stealing money from the house to pursue bad habits,so Natha decided to send him away with Suraj,” said sub-inspector Shri Kant Shahne,who is investigating the case.

After the boy appeared in the city magistrate’s office,a police team went to Lakhimpur Kheri to record the statement of Suraj Maurya,22,a college student,from whose house Anubhav had escaped. “Suraj told us that Anubhav was not ready to mend his ways so he called Aftab to bind him in shackles,” said Inspector Veer Singh posted at Kotwali in Sitapur.