Darjeeling: Teen murdered, friend held in Darj

Darjeeling, Aug. 29.TT: A night of fun that seemingly went awry in the heat of the moment has led to the murder of teenager, for which a 16-year-old boy, who went to the victim’s house to apologise without realising he had died, has been arrested in Darjeeling.

Nakul (name changed), who was arrested this afternoon, is a school dropout and was believed to be hanging out last night with two of his male friends — all aged between 16 and 18 — and three girls in a hotel here. The other two boys are school students, as is one of the girls.

The police, who have interrogated all six, have pieced together a sequence of events.

Yesterday night, Nakul, two other boys and three girls checked into Capital, a mid-level hotel, close to the Darjeeling Motor Stand near the Mall around 8.30pm.

The police are questioning the hotel owner on why the staff allowed three minor boys to check in with three girls for a night.

Nakul hails from Basbotey village, about 90km from Darjeeling.

Nima Tamang, the boy allegedly murdered last night, was 18 years old and a resident of Pachphanhatta in Darjeeling town.

He and two friends were looking for Nishant (also name changed), one of the two boys with Nakul at the hotel. The police have said the five boys were known to each other.

According to the police, around 8.45pm, Nishant went home because his mother called him on the phone. Nakul and the third boy went to buy cigarettes and beer from outside, while the girls stayed in the room. When they stepped out of the hotel, they met Nima and his friends.

“Nima and two of his friends were looking for Nishant, who had already left for home after getting a call from his mother,” said L.T. Bhutia, the inspector in charge of Sadar police station.

When Nakul told them Nishant had left, the three boys did not believe him. What followed was a scuffle during which Nakul fell on the road.

Near his hand, the boy found a sharp piece of metal and he struck Nima with it.

“Initially, Nima’s two friends thought he had only suffered a cut and decided to take him to a hospital. On the way, they realised that there was a deep gash in Nima’s stomach and his intestines were popping out,” Bhutia said.

Nima was taken to Siliguri from a Darjeeling hospital but died on the way around 2am today.

After the scuffle last night, Nakul and his friend went back to the hotel with their beer and cigarettes.

Nishant, who lived in the same locality as Nima, alerted the two boys about the 18-year-old’s serious condition later at night. “He (Nishant) heard about the incident and immediately went back to the hotel to tell the others,” said a police officer.

Nishant and Nakul wanted “to go to the hospital to apologise” to Nima but a neighbour told them “not to go there as matters had turned serious”, the police officer said.

Around 10.30pm, Nakul and two of the girls left the hotel.

The police said the third boy and a girl stayed back. The two girls who had left Capital checked into another hotel for the night.

The police believe Nakul kept loitering in the town the entire night.

Around 3pm today, people in Nima’s locality saw Nakul. They first thrashed him, then handed him over to the police but some neighbours said the boy had come to apologise to Nima, unaware that he had died.

By then, the three girls, Nishant and the other boy had been rounded up. Nima’s friends have not been detained.

“The boy (Nakul) has confessed that he had a scuffle and he hit Nima with something sharp he found on the road last night,” police officer Bhutia said.

Nakul, though he came from a village outside Darjeeling, used to live under the guardianship of a well-known family here from the age of seven. Last July, he went missing from his guardians’ house. A police officer said Nakul disappeared with some cash.

“When he was found again, the Darjeeling family immediately sent him to his parents at Basbotey. But the boy found village life to be boring and returned to Darjeeling,” a police officer said.

Bhutia said: “We have brought the hotel manager for interrogation. The manager claims he had refused the room to the six but the boys pleaded with the management that they were helpless.”

One of the three girls, according to the police, is a minor and reads in a reputed school in the town.