Haridwar/Mumbai:
Two days after CCTV footage emerged of a man kidnapping a three-year-old girl from a station in Mumbai, the victim and the accused have been traced to Haridwar.
Mumbai Railway Police says it has received information from the Haridwar Police that they have rescued the girl, identified as Sangita, and nabbed the accused, Raju, based on the video footage from Mumbai's busy Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST). The CCTV footage showed how a man gets off a train, wanders around the waiting room of the station, spots a family with a sleeping baby, sits beside her and then disappears with the child; all this in less than five minutes. The Mumbai Police said he later boarded a train for Nagpur with the child. According to the police, the incident took place on June 10 around 2 am.
"They confirm that the accused shown in the CCTV footage is the same and if that happens, then I am very thankful to the Haridwar Police," Prabhat Kumar, Mumbai Railway Police Commissioner, told NDTV. He added that a team from the Railway Police will be sent to Haridwar to confirm the identity of the accused and will accordingly seek his custody.
The parents of the child have also confirmed their daughter's identity based on the images being aired on television channels. The Mumbai Police says that Sangita was unhurt. They also said that the girl was kidnapped for begging.
"He was in Haridwar for the last ten days...He used to sleep at Ganga ghats...He was nabbed from the bus stand and was planning to go somewhere else," Arun Mohan Joshi, SSP of Haridwar said.
The Mumbai Police had earlier said that the child's parents are contract labourers from the Parbhani district in Vidarbha who clean railway tracks. On the night of the kidnapping, they were returning back home but missed their train and decided to stay at the station itself. The police had registered a case of kidnapping against the accused, who was seen limping in the video, and is reportedly aged between 25 to 30 years.