It was a usual day for e-rickshaw driver Bharamdutt Rajput (20) when a man boarded his vehicle along with two young girls from Balaji temple at Vivek Vihar and asked to be dropped off at Chintamani Chowk in Jhilmil Industrial Area 2 km away. En route, he heard one of the girls asking the man to drop them after giving them food. Sensing something suspicious, Rajput immediately alerted a Delhi traffic policeman who caught the man. Police said he was a vagabond who had allegedly kidnapped the two girls to push them into begging. DCP (Shahdara) R Sathiyasundaram said the accused, Sanjay Kumar (40), is a resident of Bihar’s Chhapra. He has been arrested. Rajput told The Indian Express that he was just doing his duty as an alert citizen: “I noticed that the children were silent. Suddenly, I heard one of them requesting the man to drop them home after giving them food and I got scared.” Rajput said he had almost reached their destination and the man tried to pay him. “I managed to ask the girls if they knew him, to which they said no. I confronted him and asked where he was taking them, and he threatened me to stay out of it. Luckily, I spotted a traffic policeman and approached him,” he said. Rajput, who is from UP’s Farrukhabad, stays in a rented accommodation in Jhilmil and has been driving the e-rickshaw for the last three years. He was felicitated by police on Saturday. A police officer said, “The girls have been handed over to their parents who work as labourers. A case under IPC section 363-A (kidnapping or maiming a minor for purposes of begging) has been registered.”
