Noida, one of the national Capital’s buzzing suburbs, woke up to a horror story this morning when the police dug up the remains of at least a dozen children from a drain in Sector 31.

The Noida police have arrested two people, Surendra alias Satish, a domestic help, and Mohinder Singh, a crane dealer at whose house he works. The bodies were found in the drain behind Mohinder’s bungalow, D-5. Gautam Buddha Nagar SSP RK Singh Rathore said: “Surendra has confessed that he had sexually assaulted six-seven children and later strangulated them.”

Surendra allegedly lured the children with chocolates and sweets into the house and then sexually assaulted them. After strangulating them, Surendra, the police said, put their bodies in sacks and dumped them in the drain.

Surendra, 30, is a native of Almora.

About 20 children have gone missing from Nithari village adjoining Sector 31 in the last two years. But the villagers claim there are 31 missing as the police sometimes refused to register their complaints. This year itself, the police say eight children went missing. The police, in fact, had printed a poster with photographs of 10 children from the village.

The police today recovered at least a dozen skulls, seven part skeletons, several severed and decomposed body parts, and a number of slippers, sandals and school bags and a tiffin box, believed to be the belongings of the missing children.

The police said they picked up Surendra this morning for the murder of Payal, a 20-year-old resident of Sector 19 in Noida, who had gone missing in May. Police had been tracking Payal’s mobile number ever since and Surendra was found to be using it, said SSP Rathore.

Surendra, during interrogation, confessed that he had killed Payal and when the police questioned him about the missing children, he broke down and accepted that he was behind the kidnapping of some of them. RK Singh, who lives next to Mohinder Singh’s house, said that Mohinder was an infrequent visitor and would come home 10-12 times in a month. It was Surendra who took care of the house in his absence. Neighbours say the drain was never cleaned by the authorities.

Circle Officer Dinesh Yadav said that all the skeletons would be sent for DNA testing after which they would be matched with the samples from the parents of the missing children. Besides, the police are also in the process of searching the drain in front of the house for which the boundary walls of a number of houses were brought down this evening.

The angry villagers said the police were not keen on investigating the disappearance of their children. SC Mishra, Ex RWA president, said the police did not do justice to the missing children of Nithari.

SSP Rathore said: “The absence of a breakthrough in tracing the missing children of Nithari cannot lead to the conclusion that the police were not putting in adequate effort into the investigation.”