Cell-shock: Kid kills aunt for a flashy mobile

Vasudev lived with his aunt and her daughter at their Bodakdev apartment as his father, a shopkeeper in Porbander, could not support him. Varsha’s husband, Mansukh, was out of station most of the time so Vasudev managed to steal money unnoticed all the time. His latest fancy was mobile phones. On Friday, Vasudev and Malay went to a cellphone shop to enquire the price of the handset, DCP (Zone I) Ajaykumar Tomar said. The next day, Vasudev left for school, only to confirm with the shopowner that the model was available. He then asked Malay to wait downstairs and went back into the apartment. He hit Varsha with a pestle on her head. As she collapsed, he put on gloves, took Rs 53,000 from the cupboard and locked the house on his way out.

At the shop, the teenager pretended to call his father seeking permission. Transactions over, he returned home to find Megha sitting at a neighbour’s and pretended to have returned home. Police said Vasudev had even wiped the pestle and sprayed air freshener to clean up his act.

‘‘We suspected Vasudev from the first day. When we were trying to talk to him, he was shivering. During interrogations on Monday, he confessed,’’ said Tomar. He had taken a fancy to mobile phones and had changed eight handsets before settling on the latest one. After failing in class IX in HBK Kapadia School, Vasudev had taken admission in another premium school near Gurukul using a forged marksheet. He had stopped attending classes after authorities asked for the original but never told his aunt.