Can’t hand rescued child back to her ‘parents’: Cops

MARGAO: On September 9, eight months after she was kidnapped from the Margao railway station, a three-year-old girl was rescued from her kidnappers in Madhya Pradesh by the Konkan Railway police. Although her parents were traced two weeks later, the railway police are in a quandary of sorts; not only have the parents been unable to produce identity documents to claim possession of the child, but they have also been living in penury.
“The parents are here in Margao. They are vagabonds and beg for a living. It will be unsafe for the child if she is returned to them,” a senior police officer told TOI.

PI Ram Asre of the Konkan Railway police station, Margao, said they have written to the child welfare committee (CWC), Panaji, to make necessary arrangements for her accommodation when she is brought from the children’s protective home in Bhopal. “Once the CWC agrees to our proposal, we will bring her to Goa,” he said.

The child has been lodged at the children’s protective home in Bhopal since her rescue on September 9. On September 25, her parents were tracked down by the Hubballi police and brought to Margao. However, as they didn’t possess any of the identification documents required to be produced before the child welfare committee to claim possession of the child, the police were unable to reunite the girl with her parents.

While the parents are awaiting the arrival of their elder daughter who lives in Mangaluru, Karnataka with the required identity documents, the police are uncertain how secure the girl will be if she is handed over to her parents. The girl was kidnapped from Platform No. 1 of the Margao railway station in November last year by an unidentified culprit, while she was sleeping besides her parents.

Based on CCTV footage that showed the culprit moving away with the child, the Konkan Railway police had managed to rescue her.