A 10-year-old boy stands facing a man. He looks scared. The first blow comes when the man, who’s holding what looks like a phone charger, swings it at the little boy, who winces. “Will you lie?” the man asks. The timid child cries that he won’t, but his pleas seem to have no effect on the man, who continues to hit him with the charger.
When you see the man mercilessly beating the child, even lifting him high into the air and hurling him on to the bed several times, it’s painful to realise he is none other than the little one’s father, Mahendra.
The incident in the video, of which TNM has a copy, took place three months back. The video was stored in the boy’s mother Shilpa’s phone. But it only came to light now after the man who repaired Shilpa’s phone a few days back, saw the video and informed the Kengeri police.
As Mahendra assaults the boy in the video, Shilpa is heard in the background telling Mahendra that he lied once again.
Mahendra, the boy's father
“Will you lie? Will you lie?” Mahendra asks. “I will not do it. I will not do it again,” the boy cries.
He slaps his son a number of times, and lifts him to throw him onto the bed four times.
Even when Shilpa says, “Enough, leave him,” Mahendra does not stop. He drags the boy on to the floor and can be seen kicking him from the bedroom to the living room.
Mahendra shouts, “What did I say I would do if you lied again?” Terrified and wailing, the boy can only mumble an answer. Mahendra again questions, “What did I tell you the other day?” The boy answers, “You told me not to lie.”
Mahendra walks away and the video ends.
“Mahendra thrashed his son for skipping tuition and not completing his homework on time. The boy is said to have lied about these things. He told his wife Shilpa to record the video and show it to the boy the next time he lies,” the Kengeri police told TNM.
A few days ago when Shilpa took her phone to a local mobile shop for repair, she told the shopkeeper to store all the photos and videos in a separate folder before repairing it.
“The man has seen this video and he informed us today. We have brought in the parents for questioning. The boy is fine now and has not sustained any injuries,” a police official at Kengeri Police Station said.
32-year-old Mahendra is based in Kengeri in Bengaluru, and is an employee at an IT consulting firm. He has been arrested by the Kengeri Police and the Child Protection Committee has been informed.