Plucky 7-yr boy survives uncle's bid to kill him

MUMBAI: It was quite literally a second life for the young son of a grave digger. Mohammed Ahmed was kidnapped by his uncle Mohd Idris on Friday night and taken to a jungle near Panvel. He was thrashed black and blue, strangulated with a wire, and left for dead.

However, miraculously, the plucky 7-year-old not only regained consciousness early in the morning but also managed to trudge his way to the Mumbai-Pane Expressway and flag down a private car. He recalled his father's phone number and the occupants later handed him over to the Panvel police.

A property dispute between Idris and Ahmed's father, who digs graves at Marine Lines' Bada Qabrastan, is said to have sparked the incident. Idris has been arrested.

The seven-year-old son of a grave digger at Marine Lines' Bada Qabrastan, who was kidnapped and strangulated by his father's brother over a property dispute, miraculously survived to tell the sordid tale.

The accused, Mohammed Idris, took the boy to a jungle near the Pune Expressway at Panvel, tied his hands with a cable wire and strangulated him with another piece of wire. The boy soon lost consciousness. Thinking him to be dead, the uncle dumped him there.

It was at around 10 pm on Friday when the boy, Mohammed Ahmed, a second-standard student of a BMC school, who was playing outside his residence at Marine Lines, went missing.