Coach is accused of torturing 6-year-old marathoner in India

Mother says she discovered scars on son who ran 40 miles at the age of 4

NEW DELHI — The coach of a 6-year-old boy who ran a marathon last year in an attempt to set a world record was arrested Monday and charged with torturing the child, police said.

The coach was arrested and charged after the boy's mother said she discovered scars on the body of her son, Budhia Singh, said police official Sarat Chandra Sahu in Bhubaneshwar, the capital of the eastern state of Orissa. The boy had been living with the coach, Biranchi Das.

"Biranchi was beating him up regularly," said the boy's mother, Sukanti Singh. "He even once tied Budhia up from a ceiling fan and threw hot water on his body."

Singh became an instant celebrity in record-crazy India when he ran 40 miles at the age of 4 — a feat that also drew immediate, widespread condemnation from medical officials and child rights activists.

His mother also complained that Das was not fairly sharing the money he had earned from the boy's long-distance exploits.

"He has given me very little, but he was earning a lot of money from my son's hard work," the Press Trust of India news agency quoted her as saying in a report Monday.

Das alleges the mother was close to selling her son to another villager for $15 when he rescued the child from the slum where the family lived. The mother had supported Das' efforts to train her son in the past.

The boy was taken to a hospital for examinations and was assigned security guards after his mother said the coach had threatened their lives.

Das denied the allegations, calling the charges "a conspiracy against me hatched by the state government's child welfare department."

The department had condemned the boy's participation in marathons as "torture" in May, a month before police stopped him from making a 60-mile walk in scorching heat across east India.

In 2006, Singh attempted to run a 43-mile marathon, sparking protests from child rights activists. Doctors stopped him after 40 miles when he showed signs of extreme exhaustion.

They found the child to be undernourished, anemic and under cardiac stress.

Singh's father died when the boy was 7 months old. Das, who met the family two years ago, has said he has raised Singh as his son.

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