Gorakhpur:

A scientist’s minor son has allegedly confessed to killing his mother at their home here, days after he misled his father and police, claiming she died of an accidental fall, officials said.

Aarti Verma died after her son, a class 11 student, pushed her and her head crashed against a wall on December 3, police said.

The revelation came to light during a detailed investigation, Superintendent of Police (North) Jitendra Kumar Srivastava said.

“After two hours of questioning, the teenager admitted that he pushed his mother during an argument, leading to a fatal head injury,” he said.

When Aarti’s husband Ram Milan, an assistant scientist at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Chennai, found her phone switched off for two days, he sent his sister-in-law to check the house on December 7. The house was locked from outside. On returning to Gorakhpur the following evening, Milan found his wife’s body on the floor, police said.

Their son, found near a Shiva temple, initially told police and his father that his mother died after a fall. He claimed he locked the house from the outside in panic and wandered aimlessly for four days, police said.

However, the post-mortem report contradicted his account, they said.

Further investigation raised suspicions as bloodstains were found at two different spots, indicating the body was dragged. CCTV footage confirmed that no outsider had entered the house, as per police.

Police allegedly recovered large amounts of cash in denominations of Rs 500, Rs 200, and Rs 100 from the boy’s room, they said.

“During interrogation, the boy confessed on Tuesday evening that on the morning of December 3, his mother asked him to go to school. When he refused, a dispute over money ensued, and his mother threw cash at him in frustration,” Srivastava said.

“In a fit of rage, he pushed her, causing the fatal injury,” he added.

The teenager has been taken apprehended, police added. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

File photo of Scottish scientist Ian Wilmut.
| Photo Credit: AP

Ian Wilmut, the cloning pioneer whose work was critical to the creation of Dolly the Sheep in 1996, has died, the University of Edinburgh in Scotland said on September 11. He was 79.

Wilmut set off a global discussion about the ethics of cloning when he announced that his team at the university’s Roslin Institute for animal biosciences had cloned a lamb using the nucleus of a cell from an adult sheep.

Initially referred to as “6LL3” in the academic paper describing the work, the lamb was later named Dolly, after the singer Dolly Parton.

The lamb’s cloning was the first time scientists were able to coax a mature adult cell into behaving like a cell from a newly fertilized embryo in order to create a genetically identical animal.

While Dolly’s creation was heralded as a revolution by some scientists, it unnerved many, with critics calling such experiments unethical.

The year after Dolly’s creation, US President Bill Clinton imposed a ban on the use of federal funds for human cloning but stopped short of banning all cloning research.

Dolly’s creation prompted other scientists to clone animals including dogs, cats, horses and bulls. Dolly also spurred questions about the potential cloning of humans and extinct species.

In recent years, scientists have proposed bringing back the woolly mammoth by using a mix of gene editing and cloning.

Dolly’s creation was part of a broader project by scientists to create genetically modified sheep that could produce therapeutic proteins in their milk. About six years after Dolly’s birth, it was euthanised by scientists after she developed an incurable lung tumour.

Wilmut, a trained embryologist, later focused on using cloning techniques to make stem cells that could be used in regenerative medicine. His work was critical to research that aims to treat genetic and degenerative diseases by helping the body repair damaged tissue.

The Roslin Institute said Wilmut was knighted in 2008 and retired from the university in 2012. He later researched Parkinson’s disease after he was diagnosed with the condition, it said.

“We are deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Sir Ian Wilmut,” Bruce Whitelaw, the institute’s director, said in a statement. Whitelaw described Wilmut as a “titan” of science and said his work in Dolly’s creation transformed scientific thinking at the time.

He said the legacy of Wilmut’s work in cloning Dolly continues to be seen.

“This breakthrough continues to fuel many of the advances that have been made in the field of regenerative medicine that we see today,” he said.

There was no immediate announcement of the date of death, survivors or funeral plans.