Lure of dance show leads two to kill teen

Swapnesh Gupta, who was kidnapped and killed in New Delhi.

A minor girl and boy, both aspiring dancers and choreographers, allegedly killed a teenage boy and pushed his body off a mountain before making a ransom call to his parents. asking for Rs 60,000.

Police said, the two were keen on participating in ‘Dance India Dance’, a reality show on Zee TV, for which they needed money. The boy had made it to the first round last year. A stranger offered to get him through to the second round the next time if he could arrange Rs 40,000, the police said.

The 13-year-old-boy Swapnesh Gupta was missing since September 15 after he left for school in south-east Delhi’s Badarpur. His father Rajesh Gupta, who runs a private security agency, filed a missing person’s complaint with the police.

Even as the police were searching for Swapnesh, his father received a ransom call of Rs 60,000 on Sunday. “The girl would call, make the demand and switch off the phone. This went on for three days; we waited patiently to track the exact location,” said a senior police officer.

A police team led by Aishvir Singh, SHO Badarpur, succeeded on Wednesday and nabbed the two. They first denied their involvement, but later reportedly confessed. Meanwhile, the boy’s parents identified a body recovered from Ranikhet Road in Uttarakhand’s Ram Nagar district on September 18.

The accused, who are 17 and 18 years old, belong to economically weaker families.

“They visited several dance academies in Delhi and Haryana. Both aspired to make it big in ‘Dance India Dance’ for which they needed money,” said Mandeep Singh Randhawa, DCP (South-East).

Swapnesh, too, was enrolled in a dance academy in Badarpur. “They hatched a plan to kidnap Swapnesh for ransom and took him to Kashipur in Uttarakhand on the pretext of participating in a dance show,” said Mr. Randhawa.

However, they realised that the boy would reveal their identity if he was allowed to go free after they took the ransom. “They decided to get rid of the boy before making the calls. So they took him to the top of a hill in Ram Nagar where they first strangulated him with a school belt before pushing him off,” he added.