India: Pupils killed boys 'to get school holiday'

Police in India have arrested three schoolchildren for allegedly strangling two small boys in the hope that their deaths would cause their school to temporarily close, police said today.

The three students, aged between 12 and 13, reportedly confessed to strangling an eight-year-old boy and his five-year-old brother so that their boarding school would close down, said a police officer in the Jalna district, about 200 miles east of Mumbai.