Mumbai, July 12: Ten-year-old Vivek Singh did not know that he would be stripped, scalded, thrashed and tonsured as a punishment for stealing an egg, worth all of Rs 3. Now he knows.
After "meting out the punishment``, the shopkeeper, four times Vivek`s age, threw him out on the pavement, without a thread on his body. He was still sitting on the footpath and crying when a passerby came up to him and asked him what had happened. Nitin Chavan, after listening to Vivek`s ordeal, took him to the Bhowiada police station where he lodged a complaint. T T Market Shantaram General Store owner Prashant Shetye then got his comeuppance; he was arrested from his home on Friday night, within a few hours of the incident.
It`s been only three months that Vivek and his mother have come to Mumbai__where his father stays__from their native place at Sultanpur in UP. Vivek`s mother was supposed to have an operation here after which, the two were scheduled to go back in August. The boy`s father has put them up at a Mhada building near Elphinstone Road.
On Friday afternoon, Vivek stepped out of his home and after roaming around for a while, he ended up at T T Market. "I was very hungry and picked up an egg from one of the shops,`` he told the police.
But the child was not prepared for what followed. "Catching him in the act``, Shetye allegedly dragged Vivek inside the shop, stripped him, beat him up and even poured hot tea on him. "He tore my clothes and hit me and kicked me. He also threw hot tea on me. He then called the barber and shaved half of the hair on my head,`` the still-traumatised boy told TOI on Saturday.
He was then thrown out of the shop, without his clothes, when Chavan happened to be passing by. "The boy told me what had happened and I took him to the nearest police station and lodged a complaint against the shopowner,`` Chavan said.
Police officials then located his mother. "We did some medical tests on the accused to check if he was drunk. The report was negative,`` sub-inspector J Kumbhar of Bhoiwada police station said. "A doctor also attended to the boy`s injuries.``
During interrogation, Shetye told the police that he caught the kid trying to steal his cellphone and not an egg. "But the boy said he was only stealing an egg because he was hungry. We are trying to find out what exactly happened,`` assistant commissioner (Bhoiwada division) Sunil Temkar said.
Shetye was booked under three IPC sections but got bail on Saturday morning.
