Police brought Bablu in for detailed questioning on Saturday, during which he broke down and admitted to having killed his daughter himself. (File Photo/Enhanced using AI)Last Thursday, a grieving father walked into a police station in Uttar Pradesh’s Farrukhabad, accusing four neighbours of killing his one-year-old daughter in a stone-pelting attack.Days later, the case took a startling turn: police said the complainant himself had strangled the child, allegedly driven by mounting debt over her medical treatment, before trying to frame his neighbours over an old rivalry.The breakthrough came after the post-mortem revealed that the child had died due to strangulation. Doctors found no injuries consistent with stone-pelting, officials said.Also Read | UP man ‘died in his sleep’. Then his family found a mark on his neckThe accused, Bablu alias Dablu, a resident of Gaugaura village, was arrested on Saturday. Police said Bablu and his neighbour, against whom the original complaint had been filed, are from the Jatav community.Ram Sahay Singh, Station House Officer of Kamalganj police station, said, “Bablu admitted to killing his daughter, who was undergoing treatment for a medical issue for a long time, and tried to frame his neighbour.”According to police, Bablu had approached the police station on Thursday alleging that four neighbours had pelted stones and bricks at his house, and that one of the stones struck and killed his daughter. He also claimed the neighbours, with whom his family had an old enmity, threatened him against reporting the incident.Police, however, found several inconsistencies in Bablu’s account. First, the four persons named in the FIR were not in the vicinity when the alleged attack took place. Second, no local resident could corroborate that any clash or altercation had occurred between Bablu and his neighbours.Story continues below this adInvestigators also found that a week earlier, one of the accused neighbours, Surendra, had filed an assault complaint against Bablu and his two brothers for allegedly beating up his brother.Further, doctors who carried out the autopsy did not find any injury marks on the child’s body consistent with being struck by stones.Police brought Bablu in for detailed questioning on Saturday, during which he broke down and admitted to having killed his daughter himself. He told police that his daughter had been suffering severe malnutrition and her health had shown no signs of improvement despite treatment.Police said Bablu told them he had borrowed money to pay for her treatment and had fallen into debt. Overwhelmed by the financial burden and emotional distress, he allegedly strangled the child before concocting the story of a stone-pelting attack to divert suspicion and settle old scores with his neighbours.