On December 8, the headless body of a four-year-old Madhav Agrawal was found in a sack near his house in Etah. He had been kidnapped on his way back from school on November 26. Madhav was the son a doctor couple and the post-mortem report showed he had been murdered a week earlier. That was when Etah, the kidnapping capital of UP which reported 14 murders in November and 50 kidnappings this year, erupted.

Hundreds of people marched to the Soron Kotwali police station, attacked it and set it afire. The police registered a case of arson and loot against over 2,500 people but haven’t arrested any.

But the man who filed the FIR, Inspector K D Chaudhury, is now being interrogated as the police suspect he is involved in the kidnapping of Madhav Agrawal. “We are interrogating him to get leads on the kidnappers. Prima facie, the inspector looks part of the conspiracy,” said DIG (Agra range) Akhilesh Mehrotra.

Madhav’s father Dr Kamal Agrawal has filed an FIR against the policeman. “I lodged an FIR with the Soron Kotwali police station but Inspector K D Chaudhary told me to sit at home and arrange for the ransom amount. I never got any ransom call,” said Dr Agrawal. He has named Chaudhary in the second FIR he filed after his son’s death. “I have set a deadline for the kidnappers to be arrested within a week,” said Mehrotra who rushed to Etah which has been without an SSP for over a month.

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