“It was not kidnapping for ransom but a planned murder,” said Anand Kumar, Deputy Inspector General, Saharanpur Range, who is supervising the investigation, on Wednesday. The leads clearly indicate that the boy was lured by the killers who were known to the family. “Raids are being conducted to nab the culprits,” he said.

According to the DIG, the kidnappers did not make any call demanding ransom. Had the motive been ransom, they would have tried to contact the family.

Postmortem reveals that Sajal was killed the very night he went missing. The boy had been strangulated with a cord.

“The family realised that the boy had been kidnapped at 8.45 pm on January 26, when another person received a call made on Sajal’s phone,” said Kumar. “Around 10.30 pm, the police recovered the boy’s scooter from the parking lot of the Saharanpur railway station. A youth had parked it and had paid the parking fee,” he said.

The kidnappers did not make any call. But the family managed to speak to them on Sajal’s cellphone on January 26, 27, 29 and 30, said Kumar. Most of the time, the phone was switched off and the kidnappers moved around Saharanpur and adjacent districts. By the time the suspects were located, the body was recovered, he added.  

Accusing the police of failure, Sajal’s uncle, Sushil Sadana, said: “We are fed up with the way police handled the case. The kidnappers spoke to us thrice on phone. At the time, the senior superintendent of police, Saharanpur, and the Meerut wing of the Special Task Force led by a DSP-rank officer were present. But they failed to trace the calls.”

The investigating team, Sadana said, had asked the family to provide money and vehicles to conduct raids. But all the help provided was of no avail. Even if the boy was murdered the night he was abducted, the kidnappers could have been traced had the police made proper efforts, he added.  

The people who used to pick up Sajal’s phone spoke in a dialect that suggested they were from Saharanpur, Meerut or Muzaffarnagar. But the police was moving around Lucknow to trace two youths Sajal knew. “They even failed to trace those youths,” he said. 

On his part, the DIG said, “We were reluctant to make any frantic move against the suspects to avoid boy getting hurt.”