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Grisly finds in India blamed on negligence

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 31, 2006

NOIDA, India - One would disappear every few weeks - a boy on his way to buy juice, a teenage girl coming home from a day of housecleaning, a young woman working as a maid.

Police said Saturday a businessman and his servant had confessed to raping and killing at least 15 children and women in New Delhi's suburb of Noida over the past two years, dumping their dismembered bodies in drains from which investigators have dug out the remains in the past two days.

With each new confession and fresh find, what appears to be taking shape is a grisly twist on a familiar story in India, where the poor are often ignored by the police.

Most of the missing - residents say a total of 38 people have disappeared - are the children of migrant workers, the sons and daughters of servants and street vendors who worked in prosperous Noida.

Their disappearances went virtually unnoticed outside this corner of Indian suburbia, and angry relatives say they also went largely uninvestigated.

Shagri Sagar, 36, said she and other relatives went to the police when her 13-year-old cousin, Beena Haldar, disappeared in March 2005 on her way home from cleaning houses.

"They said, 'You people give birth to these children and then let them loose in the street and they disappear. What can we do?' " Sagar said. "They could have stopped these killers."

While senior police officials insisted Saturday they had done everything possible to solve the disappearances, the Press Trust of India reported that five officers, including two midlevel commanders, had been suspended for negligence in handling the cases.

The alleged killers - Mohinder Singh Pandher, a businessman who owned the house where the slayings are believed to have taken place, and his servant, identified only as Satish - appeared before a court Saturday charged with kidnapping, raping and murdering 10 children and five women.

Noida police chief R.K.S. Rathore said Pandher was fond of prostitutes, "and when no call girls were to be found, Mohinder asked Satish to lure children," promising chocolate and sweets.

[Last modified December 31, 2006, 00:30:03]