Police have arrested two men who were allegedly present at the factory shed where a boy was hung upside down and given electric shocks at Rabindranagar last Friday.
A video posted on social media brought the incident to light. The boy was allegedly accused of stealing a mobile phone and given electric shocks at a factory on
the southern outskirts of Calcutta.
The boy was still missing, while the prime accused, identified as Shahenshah, a resident of Islampur, was yet to be arrested till late on Wednesday.
The police identified the two arrested men as Mustafa Kamal and Tauhid Alam. They were picked up on Wednesday morning.
There are discrepancies in their statements, the police said.
“They are changing their statements. They initially said that the boy managed to escape from the Shahenshah’s custody. Later, the duo claimed that Shaheshah
took away the boy after the video went viral. And then they claimed that they both
fled the spot and were hence not aware of what happened to the boy whom they last saw with Shahenshah,” said an officer familiar with the investigation.
In the video, the young boy, tied up, was seen hanging from a wooden pole, and a man sitting close to him was seen fiddling with an extension cord before taking out a wire and connecting it to the boy to give him shocks. The young boy’s elder brother was also with him. The man giving him shocks was identified as Shahenshah.
After the video gained traction on social media, the matter came to the notice of Rabindranagar police station, and efforts were made to identify the spot and rescue the boy.
The police said that during their investigation, they learnt that the brothers were also from Islampur and had come to the city for work. They were known to Shahenshah as they were from the same place.
After the video appeared on social media, the boys’ family is said to have contacted Shahenshah and started mounting pressure on him to release them, the police said.
The elder brother managed to escape, but the younger brother is missing, the police said.
