UK UK - Vishal Mehrotra, 8, West London, 29 Jul 1981, found deceased in Rogate, West Sussex, 1982

[Legally Bland]

Vishal Mehrotra vanished from west London in 1981 and his remains were found seven months later.

His father Vishambar said information obtained by the BBC, including interviews with convicted paedophiles, was a "major revelation".

Sussex Police said they currently had no plans to re-investigate.

Vishal went missing on the day of the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer - 29 July 1981. He and his family had been in central London watching the parade and were on their way home to Putney when he disappeared.

[...]

Sussex Police confirmed three men who were jailed for sexual abuse of children at a school in the south east of England were questioned in 2019 about Vishal's murder. One of those men revealed he wrote a confidential report in 1983 about caring for Asian children in the UK which he titled "Vishal".

Despite this, Sussex Police said they had no plans on making any more inquiries.

Vishambar Mehrotra asked: "Why would my son's name appear on a document more or less contemporaneously written by a paedophile which is in the possession of the police and the police came to the conclusion that there is nothing more to investigate?"

Father's plea for fresh inquiry into son's murder

 

[RobinCAL]

I really hope there's a fresh investigation into this. It must be so awful for the family and his father.

 

[Kitkat28]

The police have “no plans to investigate”? What the h***?

 

[Mrs Marple]

Confession emerges in unsolved murder review - BBC News

A review into the unsolved murder of an eight year-old boy reveals a child abuser had confessed to killing him.

Vishal Mehrotra went missing from west London in 1981 and his remains were found later on a farm in Rogate.

His family learned of the confession following a BBC investigation and his father Vishambar has called for a fresh inquiry.

Police said the suspect was interviewed in 1982 but was "an inveterate liar" who quickly retracted the confession.

However, the suspect has not been eliminated from Sussex Police's ongoing investigation and Mr Mehrotra said the force had "many questions to answer" about its handling of the case.

 

[Mrs Marple]

Racism blamed for failure to solve boy's murder - BBC News

 

[Mrs Marple]

Hmmm l wonder if they have eliminated the dirty dozen

Also wondering why Sussex police are leading if he went missing on Met ground - is it usual for the lead to be where the body was found?

 

[Mrs Marple]

Police scrapped plans for child murder appeal - BBC News

Vishal disappeared on 29 July 1981 as his family returned to their home in Putney, south-west London, having earlier joined celebrations for the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

Partial remains were found in Alder Copse in West Sussex seven months later. The lower half of his body has never been recovered.

 

[Mrs Marple]

New info 'turning point' in schoolboy murder case - BBC News

An interview with an abuse survivor who shed light on paedophiles operating around the time of Vishal's disappearance.

Other findings included:

• The discovery that a London man known to Vishal was accused of sexually abusing young boys. He was acquited in 2014. He is said to have driven a car similar to one spotted at the location where the schoolboy's remains were discovered in 1982.
• The abuse victim's disclosure about another man, employed by social services at the time, who had an obsession with tying up boys
• He said the man had transported him and other boys from London to care homes in the south east
• His abuser, along with two other men, were questioned by police in 2019 in relation to Vishal's disappearance and death

Mr Keep, a former Scotland Yard cold case detective, said new information revealed by the victim of sexual abuse should prompt the Sussex force to reinvestigate.

Bbm

 

[Kitkat28]

Honestly, no one gave a damn did they? As far as the authorities were concerned, Vishal was a working class, brown, and therefore totally expendable little boy. It’s so heartbreaking.

 

[Mrs Marple]

It seems to me there is a lack of communication between the forces as well. This is a known potential risk but they haven't addressed it. It's as though they keep making the same mistakes.

 

[annpats]

Also wondering why Sussex police are leading if he went missing on Met ground - is it usual for the lead to be where the body was found?

Yes. It's not where you go missing from, it's where you are found. That is where their life ended, so that particular county's (or country's) police force does the investigation.

 

[dotr]

Jan 15 2023 rbbm

Britain's worst paedophile is prime cold case suspect

Notorious paedophile Sidney Cooke has been linked to an unsolved 40-year-old case involving the disappearance and murder of an eight-year-old boy on the day Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer married.

www.express.co.uk

''Notorious paedophile Sidney Cooke has been linked to an unsolved 40-year-old case involving the disappearance and murder of an eight-year-old boy on the day Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer married.''​

''Cooke, now 95 and serving two life sentences, was made a “prime suspect” by a team of investigators in the Channel 4 show, In The Footsteps of Killers. Cooke, and his paedophile ring, are suspected of murdering up to 20 young boys in the Seventies and Eighties. He was convicted of three killings.''

The victim, Vishal Mehrotra, aged eight, had been in central London watching the Royal Wedding parade of Charles and Diana with his family.

The family left central London and returned home to Putney, but on their way back Vishal vanished from a suburban street near his home.

It wasn't until seven months later that his partial remains were discovered on an isolated farm -- at Alder Copse -- in West Sussex.

In the show, Hill reveals that Cooke’s movements cannot be accounted for on the day Vishal goes missing and that he had access to a van.

Hill also makes an explosive revelation that Cooke was living with a man called Dennis Moran, now dead, in the early 1980s and that there is a diary entry from 1982, the year after Vishal goes missing, which indicates that Moran and Sidney Cooke attended Goodwood races.. but very likely they were going there because there was a fairground nearby in which they could procure children for sex. ''

 

[Earth]

Honestly, no one gave a damn did they? As far as the authorities were concerned, Vishal was a working class, brown, and therefore totally expendable little boy. It’s so heartbreaking.

Though the fact he disappeared on the day of the Royal Wedding gave some attention. My parents remember the case when it was going on.

 

[evilwise]

It was a completely different time, children still ran around unsupervised despite no security cameras or cell phones and serial killers could just snatch people. As long as they did it surreptitiously and randomly so as to have no discernable modus operandi, they could operate indefinitely. If DNA wasn't carefully preserved at the time, there's not much investigators can do.

Now we are the complete opposite, we can assume everyone and everything is at the very least airtagged and being listened to by Alexa yet kids are still locked in.

 

[dotr]

https://www.sussexexpress.co.uk/news/crime/boy-found-dead-in-sussex-true-tv-cold-case-investigation-starring-emilia-fox-into-boy-who-disappeared-42-years-ago-on-the-day-prince-charles-married-diana-3988000

jan 16 2023
''Alone that night in 1982 in my little cottage near Tillington, I thought about poor little Vishal and the fear and horror he must have experienced. First I shuddered, then I broke down in tears.
In my journalistic career, I went on to join the national press and ended my working days as deputy editor of the free Metro newspaper. I now write about cruising.
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But the memory of the Vishal Mehrotra case has never left me. I sincerely hope this TV programme, and my small part in it, will at last help identify his killers and give his grieving family some much-needed answers.
:: The Footsteps Of Killers programme about Vishal Mehrotra will be shown on Thursday, January 19, on Channel 4 at 10pm. The episode will also be available to watch on All4.''

 

[MsMiniSleuth]

That programme - just watched - certainly showed good grounds for questioning Sidney Cooke and fast given they said he's 94 and in poor health.

The other interesting fact it highlighted was why the 2005 report when they looked at the case again was so heavily redacted.

 

[dotr]

Jan 19 2023

What happened to Vishal Mehrotra? The unsolved case of boy who vanished after royal wedding

Vishal Mehrotra vanished after watching Charles and Diana's wedding procession 41 years ago.

ca.news.yahoo.com

 

[Pricklykitty]

That programme - just watched - certainly showed good grounds for questioning Sidney Cooke and fast given they said he's 94 and in poor health.

The other interesting fact it highlighted was why the 2005 report when they looked at the case again was so heavily redacted.

I immediately thought it was so heavily redacted because there may well be well known name/names in the investigation.

 

[alb1on]

Honestly, no one gave a damn did they? As far as the authorities were concerned, Vishal was a working class, brown, and therefore totally expendable little boy. It’s so heartbreaking.

Simply untrue. His father was a well regarded solicitor (lawyer for our US friends) and they lived in an affluent part of London with a live in nanny for the children (rather uncommon amongst the working class). It would be more realistic to see the investigation as limited by the abilities of Sussex Police who are not the Met, although the Met (and Interpol) were involved in various strands of the investigation. In terms of the effort put into the investigation I can see little difference between this case and others such as that of Martin Allen (although that case had the benefit of being led by the Met). Sometimes it is not possible to resolve a case without a confession or informant even when, as in this and the Allen case, suspicions exist about certain known offenders. Those suspicions were investigated but without resolution. In terms of the redaction of the 2005 report, I would be more surprised if it were not heavily redacted given the strands of the investigation which would involve many names, known or otherwise. What will be interesting will be to see if the press report this morning about the offender found in Sri Lanka leads anywhere or introduces any new information. I am always cautious about such press puffs until we see the detail as the interference of Mark Williams Thomas (a former police officer with a grudge) in the Ruth Wilson case has been more damaging than enlightening.

 

[Earth]

Simply untrue. His father was a well regarded solicitor (lawyer for our US friends) and they lived in an affluent part of London with a live in nanny for the children (rather uncommon amongst the working class). It would be more realistic to see the investigation as limited by the abilities of Sussex Police who are not the Met, although the Met (and Interpol) were involved in various strands of the investigation. In terms of the effort put into the investigation I can see little difference between this case and others such as that of Martin Allen (although that case had the benefit of being led by the Met). Sometimes it is not possible to resolve a case without a confession or informant even when, as in this and the Allen case, suspicions exist about certain known offenders. Those suspicions were investigated but without resolution. In terms of the redaction of the 2005 report, I would be more surprised if it were not heavily redacted given the strands of the investigation which would involve many names, known or otherwise. What will be interesting will be to see if the press report this morning about the offender found in Sri Lanka leads anywhere or introduces any new information. I am always cautious about such press puffs until we see the detail as the interference of Mark Williams Thomas (a former police officer with a grudge) in the Ruth Wilson case has been more damaging than enlightening.

As I stated previously, my parents remember this case being in the news. If Vishal had been a working-class boy, I doubt there would have been much attention. (Compare Hannah Williams' case to Milly Dowler's, for example.)