A new BBC Studios nine-part podcast series explores the disappearance of eight-year-old Vishal Mehrotra, who was taken from the streets of London on the day of the wedding of Prince Charles and Diana.
The investigation tracks down a convicted paedophile who had been on the run from British police for the past 25 years, a statement said.
Written and produced by Emmy award-winning documentary director Satiyesh Manoharajah, Vishal will be released on Monday (17).
Vishal disappeared on his way home from the wedding celebrations on 29 July 1981. Despite a huge police search he is never seen alive again.
Seven months later his partial remains are discovered in a small patch of woodland in rural Sussex, many miles from home.
Despite the emergence of new evidence, no-one has been brought to justice for the abduction and death of the kid and the police appear to have exhausted all their leads even after four decades.
In 2020, a BBC local reporter receives a secretive message from a person who has worked within the police about seeing something extraordinary that could blow the case wide open.
“The Vishal Mehrotra case is a heart-breaking tragedy, and it was essential to provide more answers to his family” said investigative journalist Colin Campbell.
In the podcast series, Vishal’s 30 year old half-brother Suchin Mehrotra and investigative reporter Colin Campbell set out to gather the pieces and try to get answers in the case.
Three years in the making, the podcast team track down and question a convicted paedophile, a teacher who fled the UK while being questioned by police in relation to child sexual abuse in the 1990s and has been on the run across the world for over 25 years.
Besides, the series discovers that a UK police force had been aware for years he’d been at the address and had decided not to try to bring him back, while telling Vishal’s family that he hadn’t been located, the statement added.
Vishal will be available on BBC Sounds in the UK, and Apple Podcasts in the US, Canada and Australia.
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