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Last Updated: Feb 18th, 2008 - 14:39:01 |
NOIDA, India (Reuters) - Indian police investigating the serial killing of at least 17 people said on Sunday that five senior officers had been suspended for failing to respond adequately to reports of missing children.
Police have found the skulls of 12 children and five adults. Many of the victims are believed to have been sexually abused.
Investigators found the skulls, bones and clothes of children two days ago buried in the backyard of a house as well as stuffed in plastic bags and thrown in a dirty drain.
The grisly find in Noida, an industrial town on the outskirts of New Delhi, has shocked the country and shown police in the crime-infested state of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous, in a poor light, residents said.
Uttar Pradesh's police chief, Bua Singh, said five senior policemen in the area had been suspended and a high-level probe ordered into the case.
"There is no denying that this was a case of gross laxity, negligence and failure on the part of some policemen," Singh told Reuters.
"They did not pay attention to repeated reports of missing children from the area. Those found guilty of neglect will be severely punished."
Police arrested domestic servant Surendra Satish on Friday in connection with the disappearance of more than two dozen children in the area.
Police said Satish had confessed that he and his employer, Mohinder Singh Pandher -- who has also been arrested -- had lured the victims with chocolates and toffees, raped them and killed them in Pandher's house.
Confessions in police custody are not accepted under Indian law until the accused repeats them in court.
Relatives of the victims, mostly labourers, have charged the police with neglecting their complaints, some of which date back two years, because they were poor.
On Sunday, anger boiled over as dozens of locals, including a large number of women, broke through the gates of the house, hurled bricks at his windows and vandalised the place.
"My three-and-a-half-year-old son Harsh never returned after he went to play near a wedding hall two months ago," said Poonam, 25, a labourer who gave only one name.
"Today, when I went inside the house, I found his clothes," she said before breaking down.
Dil Bahadur Sahi, a security guard from Nepal, said his wife, Nanda Devi, worked as a domestic servant in Pandher's house and did not return home after she went to cook for her employer in October.
"I've been roaming these streets in search of her. I've lost my job and become alcoholic," said Sahi. "I don't believe the police will get me justice."
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