Kidnapped boy traced to Karnataka, abductor held

PUNE: The Bund Garden police on Wednesday traced a six-year-old kidnapped boy to Kalaburagi (formerly Gulbarga) in Karnataka and arrested his captor. The child was kidnapped on Monday night from a spot in front of the railway parcel office gate near the Pune station.

The police identified the arrested man as Iqbal Hassan Shaikh (32), a criminal on police records, from Kolhapur. Shaikh was currently residing in Belagavi. "He had abandoned the boy in front of a police station in Kalaburagi. The local police handed over the boy to an observation home. A Pune police team has left for Kalaburagi to secure the boy's custody from the observation home," sub-inspector Atul Aswale of the Bund Garden police told TOI on Thursday.
"Shaikh keeps moving around from one railway station to another, targeting railway users and persons on platforms. He has been involved in theft cases in the past," the officer said.
"On Monday night, the boy and his mother, a casual worker from Pimpri, had reached the railway station area in an autorickshaw. The woman keeps on moving within the city for work. After dinner, the two slept on the footpath in front of the parcel office gate. Shaikh struck at this moment by picking up the boy and leaving the spot," Aswale said.
In the ensuing investigation, the police spotted Shaikh in CCTV footage and worked on a few leads to track him down early on Wednesday near the Pune railway station. However, the boy was not with him. "During the questioning, Shaikh told us that he had left the boy in front of a police station in Kalaburagi. We then contacted the Kalaburagi police and they told us that they found the boy and had shifted him to an observation home," Aswale said.
This is the third incident of its kind to have occurred in and around the railway station premises over the last six months. A two-year-old boy from a Jharkhand family was kidnapped by a couple from Madhya Pradesh (MP) on December 11, 2022, from the railway platform. The government railway police arrested the MP couple and rescued the boy two weeks later.
On August 9, 2022, an autorickshaw driver kidnapped a seven-year-old girl from the footpath located near Pune railway station and attempted to sexually exploit her. The Bund Garden police then swung into action and nabbed the auto driver while rescuing the girl.
Rekha Gaikwad, a team member of the Saathi Organisation, told TOI, "There have been many incidents of kidnapping from the railway station area. Often, runaway children reaching the railway station are vulnerable to kidnapping. Our volunteers keep a watch on such children who are hungry, unkept and without chappals, without any luggage, and scared. We observe them and strike a conversation with them and then offer food or water to them. After winning their confidence, we took them to the police station and reunite them with their parents or other relatives," she said.