Woman held for ‘kidnapping’ toddler

Kurar police said a couple approached them Saturday claiming that their daughter had gone missing while she was playing.

A woman was arrested in Kurar in Malad (East) for allegedly kidnapping a two-and-half-year-old girl as she had two sons and craved a girl child. The suspect was nabbed by the police on Sunday, a day before she planned to flee to Uttar Pradesh.

Kurar police said a couple approached them Saturday claiming that their daughter had gone missing while she was playing outside their house in the Kurar village, “In missing cases we generally wait for a day before registering a case of kidnapping. But as this girl was two years old, we filed a case and began a search,” said Subhash Dafle, senior police inspector.

The police said that they searched the entire area asking people if they had seen any stranger in the locality, as they suspected a begging racket might have been involved. Similar cases had been witnessed in Kasturba Marg in Borivali as well as in Malad.

The police started circulating the victim’s photographs amongst their fellow policemen using cellular chatting applications. A police informer said he had seen the girl in his neighbourhood with a woman. “We searched the woman’s house and found the girl playing with new toys and dressed in new clothes,” said Dafle.

The police subsequently arrested the woman, identified as Ashadevi Saroj (35), a resident of Uttar Pradesh. Police found out that Saroj stayed with her husband and two sons —aged five and three years. She had come to Mumbai a week ago and had been staying at a relative’s house. “The woman told us that she had two sons and was constantly teased by her friends in her native place about not giving birth to a girl,” Dafle said.

megha.sood@expressindia.com

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