Drawing parallels between the abduction of two children in separate incidents in Delhi last month, police on Friday highlighted the common modus operandi in both the cases — an alleged attempt by the accused to coerce the mothers of the children into a relationship. Both the accused have been arrested. In the first case, reported on September 15 at the Krishna Nagar police station in East Delhi, a woman from Shahdara alleged that her neighbour had abducted her three-year-old son a day earlier. “She alleged that the accused had first come into contact with her about two months ago, and a month ago, he had proposed marriage to her. However, she refused. Enraged, the accused kidnapped her child on the pretext of providing him treatment," said DCP (Shahdara) Prashant Gautam. Police scanned more than 30 CCTV cameras and tracked the accused through call detail records and technical surveillance, which pointed towards his presence in Bihar. As officers fanned out, the accused kept shifting places, said police. A breakthrough came when the complainant managed to connect with him on a WhatsApp video call and officers noticed Surat railway station in the background. While this was shared with the Government Railway Police in Surat, a Delhi Police team rushed to the city. The man was intercepted at the station and arrested on September 19. The child was also found. The accused was brought to Delhi and sent to judicial custody, said police, adding that no previous criminal record was found against him. In the second case, reported from West Delhi's Vikaspuri, the mother of a seven-year-old boy filed a complaint on September 28 alleging that her son, who had left for school the previous morning, had not returned home. She alleged that a man with whom she had earlier been in a live-in relationship was behind the abduction. “He was of a suspicious nature and possessive towards the complainant. He suspected everyone who interacted with her and sometimes hit her also. Fed up with this behaviour, the complainant left him. Since then, he was trying to get back together,” said DCP (West) Darade Sharad Bhaskar. CCTV footage showed two men abducting the child near his school, said police, after which the accused switched off his phone. However, his movements were pieced together through advanced surveillance and social media tracking, said officers. Investigators traced one of his associates in Vikaspuri and recovered a country-made pistol from his house. A parallel search led police to a farmhouse where the accused was hiding with the boy and two associates. The child was rescued and the three were arrested.
