Vishal Mehrotra

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Sussex Police Metropolitan (POLICE)

Offense Location:

Putney, London, England

Summary:

Vishal Mehrotra, aged 8, was abducted from Putney, London on 29 July 1981. His partial remains were discovered on 25 February 1982 on an isolated farm in West Sussex. The killers were never identified and no one has ever been charged with the murder. In May 2023, Sussex Police announced they would be re-examining the case.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Offense:

On 29 July 1981, the day of the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, the Mehrotra family took the train into London to watch the wedding from the window of Vishambar's workplace. They then took the train back to East Putney, where they arrived around 1:40 pm. Vishambar went directly home, leaving his son and daughter with Carvalho. He gave each of them £20 to buy sweets. Carvalho took the children to a newsagent's, where they remained for about twenty minutes. The children had complained of sore throats, so she decided to go to buy cough medicine at Putney High Street. Vishal said he was tired and wanted to walk home by himself. Carvalho consented, feeling he was independent enough to make the journey. Vishal's parents reported him missing at 7 pm to the Metropolitan Police. On 25 February 1982, two men discovered a skull, seven ribs and some vertebrae at Alder Copse, Durleigh Marsh Farm, Rogate, near Petersfield. The bones appeared to have been disturbed by foxes and were found buried in a bog at a depth of around two feet.

Additional Details:

Between the disappearance and the discovery of the body the police investigated hundreds of sightings and interviewed over 14,000 people. Following the discovery, a large-scale excavation and search involving about thirty police officers took place. This uncovered more bones, though no clothing was found. In the late 1980s, a Metropolitan Police unit that had been investigating suspected serial killer Sidney Cooke's infamous "Dirty Dozen" child sex ring began to investigate whether Vishal could have been another of the gang's victims. The gang was known to have killed at least three similarly aged boys after abducting them in London in the 1980s, and always abducted them in broad daylight as in Vishal's case. In May 2015, Sussex Police released documents revealing that other police forces had in fact investigated links between Vishal's death and Sidney Cooke's gang on three occasions. The Metropolitan Police's child sexual abuse unit had concluded there were "strong similarities" between Vishal's case and the gang's known killings. A few months after his son's disappearance, Vishambar Mehrotra claimed to have been contacted by an unidentified man thought to be in his twenties. This man suggested that Vishal's abduction had been connected to a group of influential child sexual offenders associated with Elm Guest House in London. The man stated that he had informed the Metropolitan Police but they had not followed up his report. Vishambar gave a recording of the telephone conversation to detectives; however, they dismissed it as a prank call and it was not followed up. Circa 2019, while interviewing Nicholas Douglass about an unrelated crime, Sussex Police were told about a document he had written entitled 'Vishal', written in 1983 while he was in jail for sexual abuse of children at a school. In 2020, BBC tracked down Douglass and questioned him on why he named the document 'Vishal'. Douglass said: "It's the first [name] that came into my head because it had been in the press. [There was] massive publicity and at the time." A three-year investigation by BBC journalist Colin Campbell suggested a possible connection between Vishal's death and a child sex ring with links to Sussex and West London that included Douglass. The findings of the investigation were serialised in the BBC Sounds podcast Vishal in April 2023.

Case Last Updated:

Jul 17, 2026