The authorities of the Kothamangalam Government Town UP School were kept on their toes for several hours after a Class 1 student went missing from the school. The boy finally landed in the custody of the Perumbavoor police later in the afternoon.
The incident happened at 11.30 a.m. on Monday. The boy managed to go out of the school campus during break time in the guise of going to the toilet. “Only after ten minutes did the teachers realise that he had gone missing, and they immediately lodged a police complaint. Following this, an alert message was passed on to all stations in the region and policemen were sent across the Kothamangalam town for a thorough search,” said Augustine Mathew, Station Head Officer, Kothamangalam.
Even as the search operations drew a blank, the police, noticing the proximity of a bus stand in the school’s vicinity, also sent alert messages to all the bus stations. Eventually, a police team from Perumbavoor traced the child on board a bus that had reached the private bus stand there around 1 p.m.
The crew thought the boy was the son of a passenger seated near him while the latter thought his parents must be sitting in the front portion of the bus.
In the light of the incident, the police have issued a warning to the school authorities though no case was registered.