SANGRUR: The district and local police appeared to be clueless about the culprits who burnt a 13 year old boy to death in Malerkotla earlier this week. The boy was cremated amidst heart wrenching scenes with relatives and hundreds of people having gathered at the crematorium. Earlier the family was not prepared to cremate the body as it demanded arrest of the culprits.

The Malerkotla town observed complete bandh to protest against the incident. People blocked the roads also. The Sangrur MP Vijay Inder Singla also joined the dharna for some time and expressed heartfelt sympathies with the bereaved family.

Senior Akali Dal leader and party secretary general Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and Health Minister Surjit Singh Jiyani were among those who visited the bereaved family to express their sympathies.

Meanwhile the police were either clueless or deliberately remained tight-lipped over the identity of the culprits. The police were apprehensive that in case the culprits belonged to a different community certain vested interests and mischievous elements might try to give communal colour to the situation in an otherwise communally harmonious town. The police and local people have dismissed any communal angle in the incident.

Thirteen year old Vidhu Jain was killed in a gruesome and macabre manner when some unidentified people set him on fire burning him to death. He was boy studying in class seven. Earlier the police claimed that he had told his father about the culprits saying that their servant knew them.

The people are intrigued about the motive behind killing a young boy of 13 years in such a brutal manner. Not many people are prepared to buy the theory that the incident followed an altercation over some petty issue. The intensity of the crime and the way it was committed has shaken everybody in the town as it clearly betrayed some sense of vengeance on part of the culprits.