Jabalpur zone inspector-general M.R. Krishna said the accused was “mentally disturbed” and was keen to leave the ashram hostel and school, where he and the dead boys studied.

The police said the teenager, who belonged to rural Chhindwara, had “committed the crime” to achieve his “goal of having the school shut down”.

According to them, the boy had “carried out the crime” so that he could exploit the furore over the deaths of two students near Asaram’s Ahmedabad ashram last month. Asaram is the spiritual guru of Narendra Modi and L.K. Advani.

Many residents found the theory bizarre, wondering how the boy could have known about the Ahmedabad deaths when the hostel didn’t even have a TV.

It was not uncommon for a homesick teenager to want his school closed but that did not mean he could carry out serial murders to achieve the objective, they said.

Senior officials suggested the accused was often “taunted and laughed at” because of his “built and mature look”, but couldn’t establish if the two nursery students found dead had ever mocked him.

Raj Kumar Dik****, the arrested boy’s father, cried frame-up, saying his son had been held to protect some “high and mighty”. Dik****, from Chhindwara’s Loharbatri village, arrived here yesterday. Chhindwara, in Madhya Pradesh, is 130km from Nagpur.

In Ahmedabad, the family of the boys found dead — the two, aged 10 and 11, were cousins — and others in the neighbourhood had blamed Asaram and taken out protests against him. So far, the families of the children killed in Chhindwara have not blamed the ashram.

Officers sought to refute Dik****’s allegations by saying “tooth marks” had been found on the shoulder of the accused, implying a struggle before the children were killed. The accused will be produced in a juvenile court tomorrow.

Ram Krishna, 4, was found dead in the ashram’s bathroom on July 29 while Vedant, 5, was found dead with his head submerged “in a bucket of water” on July 31.

Chhindwara DIG K.T. Vaife said the blood and hair samples of victims and the accused had been sent for forensic tests. The Class IX student was arrested after leads from a teacher, a maid and three students picked up on Friday.