NEW DELHI, 11 January 2007 — The half-burned bodies of four children missing since November were found at an abandoned rice mill owned by a senior politician from India’s ruling party, reports said yesterday.
Congress party member Jagmeet Singh Brar has denied any involvement in the deaths of the three girls and a boy, aged between seven and 13, NDTV news channel said.
The four went missing from a village near Muktsar in Punjab state and their bodies were discovered late Tuesday, NDTV said.
Brar said the mill had been leased out for many years before being abandoned five years ago, adding he was willing to help the investigators.
“This is an unfortunate incident that has happened. It happened at Muktsar where I have my land and business establishment,” he told NDTV.
“But the land and business establishment were closed for the past five years. Criminal elements who have committed this heinous crime took advantage of the fact that the mill was abandoned.” The gruesome find has echoes in the serial killer case gripping India after the remains of 17 people, mostly children, were found near New Delhi.
An overwhelming stench led to the discovery of carefully chopped-up body parts in a sewer in an affluent suburb of the Indian capital. Two men were arrested on Dec. 29 and both have been charged with multiple kidnap, rape and murder and are awaiting trial. One of two men accused of the serial killings has admitted to having tried to eat human flesh, a newspaper said yesterday.
The accused, Surender Koli, told investigators that he had trouble being a cannibal and vomited when he tried to eat human flesh, the Hindustan Times quoted senior police official Bua Singh as saying.
The newspaper also said police had found “flesh” inside a fridge in the house where Koli and his employer, businessman Moninder Singh Pandher, lived but the authorities were unwilling to comment on whether the meat was human.
While the remains of 17 victims had been recovered, police are also investigating whether organs such as kidneys of the victims were sold, since their torsos have still not been found.
Investigators have been probing a possible pedophilia or cannibalism link to the crimes. Residents of the area — mostly migrant workers employed as domestic helpers — say as many as 40 children have gone missing in the past two years.
Detectives had completed polygraph, brain mapping and narco-analysis tests on the two to determine behavior patterns and possible motive for the crimes, news reports said. According to the NDTV news channel, Koli also admitted to being “sexually frustrated.”
