India, Aug. 28 -- LUCKNOW The gruesome murder of an eight-year-old boy in Lucknow's Gudamba area has left the city in shock, as investigators now suspect a sexual assault attempt before the child was brutally killed. The victim, a Class 3 student at a local primary school, went missing on Tuesday evening after he stepped out of his house around 6:30 pm, telling his family he was going to relieve himself.

When the boy did not return within an hour, his family launched a frantic search and later filed a missing complaint that night. Despite police efforts, the child could not be traced. On Wednesday morning, a local youth spotted the boy's body floating in a pond.

The post-mortem report confirmed that the cause of death was suffocation, l...