Busy preparing lunch for her brother, Aaroof’s mother called out to him to be safe. She was assured, though, for the park was the boy’s regular haunt every afternoon during the winter break.

This time he never returned.

The police today found Aaroof’s body from a house in the locality — he was strangled the same day (Wednesday), and the body, kept in a bag, had turned pale. The police have also arrested one of the three alleged kidnapped-turned-killers.

According to the boy’s father, Shankar Mandal, the trio worked in his whole garment business till recently. They kept calling Mandal for three days, demanding a ransom of Rs 2 lakh, even after killing Aaroof, the police said today.

Police sources said the three kidnappers — identified as Avinash, Sonu, and Abdul Anan (alias Azad) — had taken a room on rent in the locality on Wednesday itself. Neighbours have told the police that the room belonged to the mother-in-law of the local councillor, though neither was available for comment.

After kidnapping Aaroof sometime around 3 pm on Wednesday, they rang up Mandal in the evening. Mandal said he got the first ransom call from a Lucknow number around 6 pm. He immediately informed the police.

The caller identified asked him to reach Lucknow by Wednesday night with Rs 2 lakh. For the following two days, Mandal received a call each from a local number — the police have traced the caller’s whereabouts to Mehrauli.

The police, who were intercepting the calls, arrested Azad today. He admitted killing the boy the same day he was kidnapped, and said the trio kept the body in a bag in their room. The police recovered the body around 4 pm — from a third-floor room of the house owned by the local councillor’s mother-in-law.

The body has been kept in DDU Hospital; the postmortem will be conducted on Saturday morning.

The police are now hunting for the other two accused: Avinash and Sonu. “They knew Shankar kept money with him since he was in wholesale business,” a police official said. The official said all three accused are in their late-30s.

Aaroof’s mother Vishakha said, “I was serving lunch to his uncle (maama) when he went out to the park outside…. I had a nagging feeling since he went missing that he was somewhere close by.”