"Marathon boy"'s coach arrested

Police have arrested the coach of a record-breaking 6-year-old marathon runner amid claims that he regularly tortured his child prodigy.

Biranchi Das faces charges of routinely beating Budhia Singh, India’s “marathon boy”, and of starving him, putting chilli in his eyes, branding him with a hot iron and hanging him upside down from a rotating ceiling fan.

Police arrested him after the boy’s mother, Sukanti Singh, discovered scars on his body.

Budhia told Indian television channels today that Mr Das punished him by keeping him confined in a room without food for two days. “He also beat me with a hot iron rod,” he said, showing burn marks on his hands. “He never liked me.”

Mr Das has denied the allegations and claimed that the child welfare department in the eastern state of Orissa was conspiring against him because they disapproved of his ambition to turn Budhia into India’s first Olympic marathon champion.

His arrest is the latest chapter in a tale that has already astounded and horrified India since Budhia leapt to fame in May last year by running 40 miles in a little over seven hours.

The feat, reputedly at the age of 4 years and 3 months, earned him a place in the Indian record books. It won him instant celebrity in a country where the poor are encouraged to push their children to ever more outlandish achievements in the hope that it will bring commercial gain.