Journalism of Courage
Hours after she witnessed the kidnapping of her five-year-old brother from the school bus, the eight-year-old girl stood petrified near the gate of her residence. Every time anyone tried to speak to her, she responded: “Go back, I don’t want to talk.” A classmate of the boy, who witnessed the incident, wore a panic-stricken look on his face. He broke into a sweat each time anyone sporting a beard tried to enter his house.
A friend of the eight-year-old sister was the only one who was able to coherently recall Thursday’s incident. She said she witnessed something “unusual”, seconds after she boarded the school bus. “I entered the bus; the boy and his sister were sitting in the last row. I sat in the row before them, on the right side of the bus, next to the window,” the girl, aged nine, said.
“Within seconds, I noticed two men following the bus. This was very unusual. I thought something was wrong, but I did not raise an alarm. When they continued to follow us, I felt the need to tell the attendant,” she said, adding that when the bus stopped at the next pick-up point, the men entered the vehicle, kidnapped the boy and shot at the driver.
Read | Delhi: Five-year-old abducted from school bus, driver shot at; no ransom call yet
The father of the kidnapped child said the family received a call from the attendant around 7.30 am. “She asked us to reach immediately. When we got there, we found our son had been kidnapped… We haven’t received a ransom call or a note yet… There is even a police barricade at the point from where my child was kidnapped.”
At the boy’s school, the guard at the gate said they received a call from the attendant in the morning. “We got a call in the morning, shortly after the incident, saying that the driver had been shot in the leg and a student had been taken away by some people. We immediately sent another bus to the location to ferry the rest of the children. The bus which was attacked was handed over to the police. The other children attended classes and left the school at the usual time. All the information has been shared with the police,” the security guard said.
(Inputs from Aranya Shankar)
