Nagpur: Three men who knew the victim’s father have been arrested for kidnapping and strangling 11-year-old to demand ₹5 lakh ransom. Jitu vanished after school on September 15 and was found two days later in a gunny bag near Chankapur. 

The victim, Jitu Yuvraj Sonekar of Ward No. 2, Khaparkheda, was a Class VI student of Shankarrao Chavan School. On Monday (Sept 15) morning, he went to school but never returned home. His family filed a missing complaint after failing to trace him.

On Wednesday (Sept 17) morning, a goat herder discovered Jitu’s body stuffed in a gunny bag in bushes near Chankapur, Savner. Police said he had head and facial injuries and had been strangled.

Investigations revealed that Rahul Pal, along with associates Yash Verma and Arun Bharti, all residents of Chankapur and known to Jitu’s father, had planned the kidnapping to demand ₹5 lakh. Jitu willingly accompanied Rahul in a white car (MH-40/A-7997) on Monday evening. The trio drove him through several routes—including Annamode, Koradi Temple Road, Waregaon, and Bina Sangam—before strangling him inside the car between 11 p.m. and midnight near an AB Incline coal mine road.

They initially kept the body in an illegally occupied WCL quarter in Chankapur but later dumped it in nearby shrubs, hiding the gunny bag under a sand heap to mask the odour. Police recovered the car, school bag and the bag used for disposal.

Officers disclosed that Jitu’s parents live separately and his father recently received proceeds from farmland in Madhya Pradesh, which the accused knew about. Acting on the mother’s suspicion of Rahul, police detained him, leading to the arrest of all three under charges of murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy.