The father of a schoolboy murdered 42 years ago has called on the prime minister to order a fresh investigation as he accused the police of being “careless and negligent”.
Vishal Mehrotra, eight, was abducted from west London in July 1981 and his remains were found in Rogate, West Sussex, seven months later. No one has been prosecuted for his murder.
His father, Vishambar Mehrotra, a retired magistrate, said he had “no faith or trust” in Sussex police over its handling of the case.
It emerged last year that the force had formally reviewed the investigation only once since 1981, contrary to national guidance stating that unsolved cases should be considered for review every two years.
The Sussex police force has also been criticised for failing to launch a major review when evidence emerged in 2019 of a potential link between Vishal’s murder and a local paedophile gang whose members were jailed for abusing boys.
A new BBC podcast, Vishal, which launched on Monday, describes how the BBC South East journalist, Colin Campbell, and two retired police officers investigated a connection between the group and the unsolved disappearance.
Shaun Keep, a retired Scotland Yard detective who helped convict the killers of Stephen Lawrence, said he was “quite aghast” at the force’s response to the fresh material: “I did feel it was entirely inadequate, quite frankly.”
In an interview with the Guardian, Mehrotra, 77, said he had written to Rishi Sunak to ask him to demand answers from Sussex police or even order a fresh investigation. The former solicitor, who has cancer and is in poor health, said he felt it was his “final chance” to get justice for his murdered son.
He said: “I have no faith or trust in the police service at all. In the last two to four years they have botched up any investigation they had a chance to do. They have been careless and negligent. The only person with the proper authority [to intervene] is the prime minister. He’s the only person I can rely on to challenge so many things.”
He added: “How can I die in peace not knowing there were so many opportunities over 40-odd years which the police seem to have had so little desire to conclude? At least I should give it one final chance with the prime minister. Who else is there? Nobody.”
Sussex police said Vishal’s murder had, since 2005, been on its schedule of cases “assessed” every two years, though that is short of a major review. The force said it was satisfied that all inquiries in relation to the Sussex child abusers had been “thorough and completed with careful consideration of all surrounding information”.
Part of the new material uncovered by the BBC podcast team includes a document, titled Vishal, written in 1983 by a man convicted of child sexual offences about a boy he was abusing.
The document was created a year after Vishal’s remains were found in woodland less than five miles from where the mother of this offender lived, in a property where he is known to have abused children. It has been held by Sussex police since the 1990s but was only connected to Vishal’s murder four years ago.
A Sussex police spokesperson said the force had advised Vishal’s family that at present “there are no proportionate or viable lines of inquiry to be followed up in this investigation” but that it would remain open “unless it is detected”.
