Neighbour of 8-year-old killed in Gurgaon recalls mother’s words: ‘My son is not waking up… please help’

“My son is not waking up. Please help,” he recalled Poonam’s words. The 54-year-old rushed out. “The boy was on the floor. I checked his pulse… and couldn’t feel his heartbeat,” Dixit said.

By then, he said, another neighbour walked in and suggested the boy be taken to a clinic nearby. “His mother (Poonam) refused,” Dixit said. “She said police will come to know…”

Police later said the boy had been murdered. When the mother was questioned, police claimed, she kept changing her statements. She later claimed she killed the boy, police said, adding that Poonam was arrested.

Dixit, meanwhile, informed Arvind, Poonam’s husband. A contractual labourer — he lays tiles — Arvind was at work nearby. He rushed home and took his son to a private hospital. “The doctor told us he was dead,” he said. Arvind’s world came crashing down.

Around 3.30 pm, police arrived at the hospital after authorities alerted them. Police found the child had come home around 1 pm from school, going by footage from a CCTV in the street.

“Poonam claimed she heard her son’s water bottle fall and found him unconscious… She changed her statement many times… Later, she said he drank water and fell unconscious,” ACP (Udyog Vihar) Naveen Sharma told The Indian Express.

“Next morning, she claimed… she killed her son… initially, she said she got angry on seeing paint on his school uniform. Later, she said he had lost his book…,” said the ACP, adding, “We are still questioning her over the motive… The child was strangled with his (mother’s) saree.”

ACP Sharma also said that the mother had changed the child’s clothes and washed his trousers.

Arvind, meanwhile, talked about his wife, their marriage and life. Arvind is from Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh. Poonam is from a village in Sitapur, 45 km away from her husband’s. “We got married while we were very young. I was 15, Poonam was 16. It was an arranged marriage. We would fight every day…,” he said.

“When I moved to Delhi for work, we stayed away for long. We grew apart.”

Arvind said three years ago, he got his family to live with him. “At the village, 15 members of our family lived together and it was becoming difficult. So, I rented a room in Sarhaul village for us.”

A school was just 50 metres away. “I enrolled our son there. It was a good choice. I thought he would be safe,” Arvind said.

He can’t believe his son is no more. “He was a quiet boy. He took time to open up. But when he was with his friends, he was different, talking all the time, happy… We would watch cartoons together. He loved a show called Jungle Tales,” he said.

While the mother was taken into police custody, Arvind took his son’s body back to his village for the last rites. “I’ve decided not to return to Gurgaon,” he said.