In a brutal event that has sent shockwaves through the nation’s capital, a two-year-old boy was reportedly strangled to death by his maternal aunt in the Mukherjee Nagar area of North Delhi. The story started Saturday afternoon in a public park close to the SFS flats, transforming what should have been a family outing during the fasting season of Ramadan into something of a nightmare.
Locals found the accused, 30-year-old Ajra, sitting in the park with the lifeless body of her nephew Hadi in her lap. Eyewitnesses saw what they described as a surreal and haunting sequence where a woman appeared to be weeping over the child, an act that authorities later referred to as a staged or fraudulent incident to conceal the heinous crime she had committed.
The young Hadi, who was the victim, lives with his parents in the Seelampur area in Delhi. He had recently visited his maternal grandmother’s house at the SFS flats in Mukherjee Nagar for the Ramadan festivities, where he and his mother Uzma went out with Uzma.
Based on family details and initial police reports, Ajra, Uzma’s sister, volunteered to take the toddler for a walk to a nearby park. And trusting her sister, the mother let the child go, not realizing that it would be the last time she could see her son alive. In the park, far from the immediate sight of the family, Ajra supposedly turned on the unarmed toddler and strangled him to death. The crime was not entirely unobserved.
Apparently a gardener or worker inside the park caught a fleeting glimpse of this bloody struggle. Shocked by what he saw, he sounded an alarm, and a crowd of local residents rushed in. By the time the onlookers had arrived at the scene, the child was unresponsive. At sensing she was being watched, Ajra allegedly staged an elaborate display of grief, sitting with the corpse, yelling out loud to imply that something accidental had taken place to the boy.
Yet the witness’s account was enough for the locals to immediately warn the Mukherjee Nagar police station. The police arrived on the scene around 1:30 p.m. and reported a tense standoff. Ajra was said to have become hysterical and denied handing over the toddler’s body to the officers, holding the body close to the police.
The police eventually secured the body and took the woman into custody, although it took a great deal of persuasion and effort from staff. The victim's body has since been moved to a local medical center for postmortem assessment to ascertain the exact medical cause of death, although preliminary evidence strongly points towards a manual strangulation. The motive behind this horrific incident so far is a mystery.
Ajra is now under investigation by the Delhi Police to determine whether the murder sprang from a deep-seated family feud, personal jealousy, or a sudden breakdown of her psyche. Neighbors and family members are being asked questions to find out if there was any rancor between the sisters that could have precipitated such a violent outlet. The Mukherjee Nagar community is in a shocked state of terror and disbelief and wondering how a family outing could end with such a cold-blooded betrayal.
