2 infants abducted in separate cases rescued, 5 arrested | Mumbai news

MUMBAI: The Vanrai and Virar police rescued two infants from kidnappers and reunited them with their parents on Monday. Five people, including three women, were arrested in the two separate cases.

In the first case, reported in Virar, a 3-month-old child was abducted, after which Mandvi police arrested a woman and rescued the child from Bihar. The police said the 38-year-old woman, identified as Kitabunnisha Chaudhary, had kidnapped her sister-in-law’s son.

Police traced the accused, a mother of three children, to Bihar’s Sarmer village, located on the Jharkhand border, and rescued the child safely. Senior inspector Sanjay Hazare of Mandvi Police Station said that the 38-year-old had left her husband and children, who live in Wadala, a year ago to live with her 18-year-old boyfriend in Virar East. However, the boyfriend soon returned to his home state, Bihar. Desperate to get him back, the accused told him she was pregnant with his child and sent him photos of her sister-in-law who was actually expecting.

After the sister-in-law delivered the child, the accused kidnapped him and took him to Bihar to settle down with her boyfriend, who had agreed to marry her by then.

“On questioning, the boyfriend told us that he had agreed to marry her because he thought the child was his,” said Hazare. The police arrested the accused and reunited the infant with his parents after 10 days.

In the second case, the Vanrai police arrested four people, including two women, for allegedly kidnapping a 38-day-old baby from a pavement in Goregaon East while his parents were asleep.

According to the police, on March 2, the parents, Suresh and Soni Salat, missed their train back to Vasai, and decided to sleep on the pavement adjacent to the Western Express Highway and take the next train back home. Next morning, when they were unable to find their son, who was sleeping next to them, they approached the police.

After scanning through CCTV footage of the area, the police found that the baby had been taken away in a rickshaw.

“After getting the location details of at least 11,000 autos, our officers zeroed in on a rickshaw driver. We laid a trap near his house at Malwani and arrested the accused, Raju Bhanudas More, and his two wives. They wanted to sell the baby,” said Smita Patil, deputy commissioner of police, zone 12.

Police arrested More, his wives, and an agent who had promised to find a buyer for the infant. The arrested four were produced in court on Tuesday which remanded them in police custody till Marh 18.