Hyderabad: Ex-security guard kills 5-year-old girl, demands ransom after hiding body

A day after a five-year-old girl, Aurelia, was found dead in the cellar of her building in Kowkoor suburb of Hyderabad, a former security guard was arrested for her murder. Vikram Kumar, who had worked at the Villa Orchids gated community till recently, allegedly abducted Aurelia on October 10, killed her and hid her body before making ransom calls to her family.

Malkajgiri Commissioner of Police told the media that Vikram killed the child by strangulation, tied stones to her body and left her in a water sump in the cellar of the building’s clubhouse, in an area without CCTV cameras. 

The Commissioner said that Vikram allegedly killed the child because he felt it would be difficult to take her along with him out of the gated community alive, and that it would make it easier to be traced. 

Aurelia lived at Villa Orchids with her parents, 13-year-old brother and grandparents. She would go to the clubhouse of the gated community by bicycle everyday to play, from around 6 pm to 7 pm, her father Milton Fernandes Moses said in a police complaint.

On October 10, she hadn’t returned home even by 7.45 pm, when Milton returned home. His father told him anxiously that had just received a call from a stranger, saying he had kidnapped Milton’s son. Milton said soon he himself got a similar call, with the caller claiming Milton’s son was with him and demanding Rs 20 lakh. Milton said he told the caller he might have called the wrong person, as his son was with him, and cut the call. But on realising that Aurelia was missing, he rushed to the clubhouse and searched for her along with his family members, friends and community residents, but could not find her. 

The Bollarum police registered a kidnapping case under Section 140(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and started searching for the girl. As CCTV footage did not show her leaving the gated community, they expanded the search inside the complex until they found her body in the clubhouse cellar. 

Commissioner Sumathi said that they zeroed in on Vikram Kumar, who had worked there briefly from September 22 to October 6, as a suspect. They arrested him on October 11 around 4.30 pm, she said. During interrogation, she said they found that he targeted the girl as she went to the clubhouse regularly. The child went along with him to the cellar as he was familiar to her, the Commissioner said. 

Vikram was removed from the job after the security in-charge received a few complaints against him, according to the Commissioner. She said that he managed to enter the community on October 10 by claiming he was there for some work related to the Bathukamma festival celebrations organised in the complex.