Patna: A 12-year-old boy was beaten to death in Bihar for trying to pluck lychees from the orchard of a neighbour.
The incident took place at Nabtola Chowka village in Bhagalpur district.
Reports said Aman Kumar, a grade four student studying in a local government middle school, could not resist picking some of the ripe pink fruit in an orchard that belongs to Bindeshwari Mandal.
Aman along with four of his friends entered the orchard on Tuesday afternoon and began to pick at the fruits. When the orchard owner saw the children stealing fruits, he rushed to nab them.
While Aman’s friends managed to flee, he was caught. Subsequently, he was badly beaten with bamboo sticks and belts; he sustained grievous internal wounds.
Reports said soon after the incident the victim returned home but did not say anything to his family members. When his condition started deteriorating at night he told his family about the incident. He was rushed to a local hospital but succumbed to his injuries on Wednesday. The victim’s father, Chhotan Mandal, works as a daily-wage labourer in a private factory.
The police have arrested three people in connection with the incident. “We have arrested three children of [the] orchard owner and sent them to jail,” local police official in charge of investigation Ranjan Kumar told the media on Thursday.
Such incidents are quite common in Bihar. Last year, a 10-year-old boy was beaten to death in Katihar district after the cow he was grazing strayed into the agricultural field of a villager.
A similar incident had taken place in May 2016 when a middle-aged villager was killed after his goat strayed into the agricultural field of the landlord. The horrible incident took place at Karma village in southern Bihar’s Nawada district.
Another such incident was reported from central Bihar’s Rohtas district in October 2014 when a 15-year-old Dalit boy was burnt to death just because his goat strayed into the paddy field of an upper caste villager and grazed the standing crops.
