11-year-old found,claims he was kidnapped by ragpickers

Enquiries with Amir revealed that a gang of ragpickers who worked near the railway station had kidnapped him. “He doesn’t remember most details as he claims that they used to make him smell some wet rag after which he would fall unconscious. They apparently took him to the railway station and made him pick rags for them in an inebriated condition. The rest of the time they would use the rag to keep him unconscious. They also took away his school uniform and made him wear tattered rags so that he could not be identified by passersby who had seen posters of the boy stuck in the locality. Thankfully they did not harm him physically,” said Ansar Khan,Hussain’s relative.

In his statement to the police,Khan said that on Thursday morning he had dropped Amir to the BMC-run school in Nehru Nagar but could not find him when he returned to pick him in the afternoon. “We will now conduct enquiries to verify the claims of the family about the kidnapping of the boy by ragpickers,” a police official from the Nehru Nagar police said.