Calcutta, May 31: Two boys, aged eight and nine, have confessed to drowning a friend in a pond two days ago after quarrelling over a kite.

Ten-year-old Pitu Roy’s body was fished out of the Kestopur pond close to his home on Wednesday, three hours after he had gone for a dip with the two younger boys.

After being repeatedly questioned by Pitu’s mother, one of the boys confessed yesterday that he and his friend had hit Pitu with a stick after a quarrel over a kite and then pushed him into the pond.

As Pitu came up to breathe, they hit him again, this time on the head, with the wooden stick.

Still, Pitu managed to clamber onto the bank somehow, but the two younger boys scratched him and stuffed his mouth and nose with mud and threw him back into the water.

This time, Pitu did not surface.

The two boys are Pitu’s neighbours at Mondalpara in Kestopur. Two of Pitu’s uncles recorded their words on video today before the family lodged a police complaint late tonight.

The police have questioned the boys and filed a case under section 304 of the Indian Police Code (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).

“Since Pitu couldn’t swim well, he would never have spent too much time in the pond. On Wednesday afternoon, when he didn’t return after half an hour, I went looking for him. After three hours, his body was fished out of the pond,” Pitu’s mother Anita said.

“Yesterday afternoon, after I repeatedly questioned one of Pitu’s friends, he told me what had happened. I couldn’t believe it,” Anita, who has two other sons, added.

She told her brothers, who live nearby, about what had happened.

Neighbours then called the two boys this morning and questioned them. While the boys were narrating the incident, they were recorded on video.

“We couldn’t believe that children could be so revengeful. We immediately recorded their statements on a video camera,” said Bikash Adhikari, one of Pitu’s uncles.

As the news spread, some residents of the area informed Baguiati police.

After going through the recording carefully, the police took away the boys with their mothers for interrogation.