Jalna’s killer kids are composed, at ease

NAGPUR: The three teenage students who killed their two younger schoolmates in a tribal residential school in Partur village of Jalna district are unrepentant. DNA broke the story on August 23. In fact, they looked "composed and at ease", while being sent to a reformatory, according to the Partur police, probing the chilling incident in the Ashram Shala.

Partur police said the three accused, Namdev Prahlad Pawar, 13, Vallabh Dilip Kale, 13, and Mangal Datta Kale, 12, looked "happy" while being sent away from the school. It was as if the three had finally got the long desired holiday, police said.

"When we asked them how they committed the crime, they narrated the entire sequence of events quite vividly. It is as if they are proud of their act," PSI Shirish Rathod, the investigating officer, told DNA. "They longed to go back home and since the school declares a holiday after a student dies, they picked the two brothers and killed them.  "They come from far away Nanded and Hingoli districts and had not been home for four months. They remembered their school had given vacation when a student had died, and felt that's the best bet for holidays."

"The accused belong to the Pardhi community, a nomadic tribe known for a vagabond life. They live a free life, playing in forests, learning how to capture birds and reptiles; so living in a residential school a disciplined life, away from parents and friends, and that too from an early age must have been like a prison life," explained Rathod.