CHENNAI: A day after an eight-month-old baby girl was kidnapped from Elliot’s Beach, the city police rescued the child and arrested five people, including three women, at Nesapakkam on Saturday morning.Among the five held, one Manikandan of Nesapakkam had approached the other four- S Mary (35) of Karaikudi, A Tirupathi Ammal (42), A Bala Vengammal (18) and S Ruben (19), all from Saidapet - with an offer of `2.25 lakh to kidnap a baby for his childless sister.

A few days ago, the kidnappers noticed the baby girl Rajeshwari along with her mother at the Elliot’s Beach, and hatched a plan to take away the child. On Friday around 2 am, when the baby was sleeping near her mother at the beach, the four-member gang went there in an autorickshaw and lifted the kid and escaped. Noticing that Rajeshwari was missing, her mother Sneha searched the locality in vain and finally approached the Sastri Nagar police station. Sneha, belonging to a nomadic community, had come to the city with her mother and some other woman from Kumbakonam after having a quarrel with her husband Basha. Initially, Sneha suspected that Basha would have lifted Rajeshwari since he had objected she taking the child with her. 

However, when contacted by police, Basha denied having any connection with the incident and rushed to the city to search for the baby. Soon, the police started searching for the missing child by combing through CCTV footage from the beach area. One of the footage turned particularly helpful as it showed three women taking away the child  from the skating ground on beach before escaping in an autorickshaw.   

The police immediately formed four special teams and started looking at CCTV footage from various locations in the city to track the autorickshaw. It was found that the kidnappers changed rickshaws at three locations before reaching Nesapakkam. The sleuths immediately rushed to the area and caught the kidnappers while rescuing the baby. They also seized `1.15 lakh cash from them. 

Besant Nagar
“The child was rescued and handed over to parents on Saturday,” said Adyar Deputy Commissioner Pakalavan. Police found that the gang was not involved in any crimes before, and they were conservancy workers in Besant Nagar