Overview
- The one-and-a-half-year-old boy was taken to hospital and declared dead after an incident on May 29, and doctors concluded his death resulted from repeated physical assaults rather than accidental choking.
- Police arrested the mother's live-in partner, A Ashkar, on murder charges and the mother, Akhila, has been booked for abetment and remanded to judicial custody.
- Investigators say Ashkar told them he had been abusing the child for weeks and had decided months earlier to kill him, and officers recovered a stick, a lighter and signs that bloodstained clothes had been burned.
- Forensic findings reported by officials include cigarette- and lighter-type burns, severe genital injuries, multiple fractures and internal bleeding, with reported injury counts varying from 51 to 91 pending the final medical report.
- Relatives say they raised alarms earlier after seeing injuries and a social-media photo showed the child with plastered arms, fueling public outrage and prompting scrutiny of police response and child-protection procedures.