Mumbai: After three days of discovering the body of a three-year-old boy in the Kushinagar Express, the railway police are yet to trace the accused. The GRP (Government Railway Police), the Local (railway) crime branch, RPF (Railway Police Force), and the Amroli police have been collectively searching for the accused.
The LTT (Lokmanya Tilak Terminus) police have formed six to seven teams to trace the accused, Vikas Kumar Shah, 25, who allegedly killed his three-year-old cousin, Aarav Shah. The GRP suspects the accused is roaming in Mumbai.
About The Case
According to the railway police, the accused lives in Bihar with his parents. He, along with his mother, had arrived in Surat to meet his younger maternal aunt, whose son is the deceased, and intended to look for a job and settle there. Meanwhile, his aunt said his behaviour was not good and allowed him to come to her house only for meals, suggesting that he live separately. This led to an altercation between him and his aunt.
After the argument, he took her child to Surat railway station on a bike, got a lift, and switched off his mobile phone. He then brought the child to Mumbai. Later, his mobile location was traced first at Dadar, then Vidyavihar, and finally at LTT. The police suspect that he did not travel by the Kushinagar Express but might have travelled from Surat to Dadar by another mode of transport. Only one CCTV footage has captured him at the LTT foot overbridge after the incident.
Where exactly he killed the toddler is still unclear. He might have killed the boy elsewhere or in an isolated area and later dumped the body in the express’s lavatory dustbin. Currently, the police are reviewing CCTV footage, and teams are searching for him both at railway stations and outside them.
A police officer stated, "At present, a team of Amboli police has gone to Bihar in case he travels there, while another team is in Surat, where the accused’s mother and relatives live. Several other teams are searching for him in Mumbai. His last mobile location was traced to Bandra. Our teams are also searching for him in various towns. We suspect that he is still in Mumbai, and we will arrest him soon."
Vikas Kumar Shah is accused of allegedly killing his three-year-old cousin, Aarav Shah, and disposing of the body in a dustbin inside the Kushinagar Express’s lavatory compartment, which arrived at Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) on Saturday. Initially registered as a kidnapping by Amroli police in Surat on August 21, the case was later upgraded to murder after forensic and post-mortem reports confirmed that the boy was killed with a sharp object. The post-mortem ruled out sexual assault.
