A Class XI student was arrested on Thursday for bludgeoning to death one Ranjan Ekka, 35, whose body was found in a drain near Satellite Colony in Jagannathpur on Wednesday.

The 17-year-old boy, police said, had lost his cool after he apparently caught Ekka, a mining engineer, in a compromising position with his widowed mother near their house on Tuesday night. He has confessed to the killing and forwarded to the Dumardaga remand home.

According to police, the teenager repeatedly hit Ekka with a spade on the head till the latter collapsed. He then dragged the body a couple of hundred metres and left it near Satellite Colony. He also attacked his mother with a stone and left her injured.

“The boy has confessed. He murdered the mining engineer in a fit of rage. We have booked him under Sections 302 (murder) and 307 (attempt to murder) of the IPC and forwarded him to judicial custody,” said Jagannathpur OC Anup Kumar Karmakar.

Sources at the police station said the accused was the eldest among three siblings. His father, who was a peon, had died in 2016. His mother runs a small dairy business and they have had a stressful relationship for the past five months.

The woman also cultivated crops on a patch of land in Jagannathpur on share basis. She had invited her lover to a hut in the field on Tuesday evening.

“When we questioned the boy, he showed no remorse. He said he had warned his mother in the past against her affair. He said his father loved his mother a lot and she had no business being with another man even after his death. His hatred for the victim is clear from the way he trussed up the body and dragged it for over 200 metres,” a policeman said.

Ekka’s bike and identity card have been found at the scene of crime along with the blood-caked murder weapon.

Preliminary investigation reveal the mining engineer, a native of a Lohardaga village, worked at a Khelari colliery on the fringes of Ranchi.

Ekka was married and is the father of a six-month-old boy. His wife is a probationary officer with SBI. They were married in 2015. She was earlier posted in Nagpur, but transferred to Ranchi a year ago. She lives with her sister in Tatisilwai while he lived with a maternal aunt in Jagannathpur.

Neighbours had seen the widow with Ekka on several occasions, which helped police identify the body and crack the case in 48 hours.

Body in quarry

The body of a 38-year-old man, Sanichara Munda, was recovered from an abandoned stone quarry at Kochbong in Namkum, Ranchi, on Thursday. He was missing since Saturday.

Corpse with bullets

Dhanbad: One Ghanshyam Nishad, 35, of Jharia was found dead with bullet wounds near a mine in North Tisra colliery of BCCL, 13km from the district headquarters, on Thursday. Residents blocked Jharia-Baliapur road for more than an hour, demanding arrest of the killers.