Afreen with her three children at Sitapur district hospital.
AROUND THREE months after he allegedly threw his four daughters off the Kamakhya-Katra Express in Sitapur district, Iddu Ansari was on Tuesday arrested by the Government Railway Police (GRP) from the Lucknow railway station. On October 24, last year, a six-year-old girl, Munni, was found dead along the railway tracks in Sitapur. Near her were her injured sisters Anbul (7) and Saleeba (4). A day later, a woman — initially identified as the mother Afreen — was found dead around 50 km away near the tracks at Maigalganj in Lakhimpur Kheri. Her 11-year-old daughter, Rabiya, was found unconscious near the tracks in Mahmudabad.
However, reported to be dead, 40-year-old Afreen had reached her native village Jhakra in Bihar’s West Champaran district on October 30, last year, with her two-year-old daughter Haseena. She had claimed that her husband threw their daughters from the train, as he didn’t have the money to get them married. GRP officials said that Ansari has confessed that he pushed his daughters from the train as he wanted to get rid of them. Lucknow GRP SP Saumitra Yadav said: “On Tuesday, we traced Ansari’s location with the help of cellphone surveillance near Lucknow railway station… he was travelling in a train from Bihar to Delhi. A team laid a trap at the station and arrested him soon after the train arrived around 1.30 pm.”
“During interrogation, he confessed to have pushed his four daughters off the train under influence of alcohol… he wanted to kill them when the train was passing through Sitapur. Absconding since then, Ansari had stayed in Pathankot, Ludhiana, Delhi and Nepal,” Yadav added. The SP said Ansari has not said why he wanted to get rid of his children.
Soon after the injured sisters were found, based on their statement, GRP had lodged a case on murder and attempt to murder against two persons, including Ansari’s brother-in-law and his friend. Anbul had alleged the duo had pushed her and sisters from the train. However, when a police team visited Bihar, they found that both accused were in their village the day of the incident.
Following this, Ansari was named as an accused in the case. While a police team visited Katra area of Jammu, where Ansari used to work as a mason, he could not be traced. “While Rabiya was treated at Lucknow’s King George Medical University, her two sisters were admitted to the Sitapur District Hospital. The girls were discharged in November and had left for their native place in Bihar,” said the SP.