15-yr-old girl, who used Insta profile to lure teen victim, detained on murder charges

The boy’s mother had approached police on December 31 and reported that her son had left the house on his two-wheeler on December 29 and had not returned home.

Since the missing person’s case was that of a minor, police had registered a kidnapping case against unidentified accused on the same day — December 31.

As police teams and the Crime Branch Unit 3 launched a parallel probe, they initially zeroed in on four suspects. An initial probe
revealed these youths had had a dispute with the victim and kidnapped him as a fallout of that. The suspects could not be found in Pune and were reported to be missing from their houses. Based on technical leads, the investigation team found out that the suspects were in Belgaum in Karnataka. Teams were dispatched and four suspects were detained. During their questioning, the suspects confessed to having kidnapped and murdering the victim.

Police subsequently identified and arrested two suspects, while the remaining two minor suspects were kept detained. Three more suspects were arrested and one more minor was detained. Based on information given by the suspects, police confirmed the location where the body was buried and exhumed the remains as per procedure. “Probe revealed that the deceased used to trouble some of the accused. The suspects had been nursing grudges against him and hatched a conspiracy to murder him,” said an officer.

Two days ago, the Crime branch team received credible leads about the girl whose Instagram profile was used to lure the victim. “Investigation has revealed that the girl knowingly trapped the victim in a fabricated romantic relationship using her Instagram profile. On December 29, she lured him to come to (a particular spot) from where other accused in the case kidnapped him, murdered him and subsequently buried the body to destroy the evidence,” an officer who is part of the probe said.

The girl has been arraigned before the Juvenile Justice Board and remanded to an observation home, an officer said.