7 children kidnapped

Acting on the information provided by the younger brother of a missing boy, the police have launched a massive manhunt to track down the foreigner and the missing children. However, the extensive search operations have not yielded any success so far as the child has not been able to provide details about the identity of the foreigner or his description, said inspector in-charge of Khadak police station V W Patil.

The missing children had contacted one of their neighbours telephonically twice in the morning saying that they were safe. However,they could not furnish any details about their whereabouts, said the residents of the area.

Meanwhile, the police have alerted their counterparts from various places besides sounding an alert to seal all the exit points from where one can go out of country, the senior police officials said. The scrutiny of a large number of foreigners visiting Pune has also been initiated, they added.

The seven missing children include Rahul Chandrakant Khade (15), Yogesh Vishnu Pore (15), Yogesh Ramchandra Sutar alias Ajivant (15), Harikesh Prakash Thakur (14), Anil Deepak Pardeshi (14), Nitin Mahadeo Shinde alias Giri (14) and Rahul Satish Honrao (12).

The children left their residences without informing anyone about where they were going and did not return. They were last seen around 8.30 pm, the police said.

Son of an estate agent-cum-autorickshaw driver, Rahul Khade studies in 10th standard with the Sarasvati Mandir High School. Yogesh Pore, whose father works with a government establishment at Dapodi, studies in10th standard with the Adarsha High School. Son of a Guruwar Peth cobbler, Yogesh Sutar is a 10th standard student of the Shivaji Maratha High school. Harikesh Thakur, Anil Pardeshi and Nitin Shinde study in the 9th standard while Rahul Honrao is a 8th standard student of the N M V High School.

During the course of questioning by the police, Pintu Sutar, the younger brother of Yogesh Sutar, suspected that the children might have gone away with a foreigner whom all of them had met in Pune Cantonment area recently.

He said he, his brother and their six friends had gone for a stroll near the Victory Cinema in Pune Cantonment area about a week back when they engaged into a conversation with the foreigner. Besides feeding them in a posh hotel the foreigner had given them Rs 50 as gift, he added.

Shantanu Supekar, a resident of the area who runs a shop in Tulshibaug area, claimed that he had seen a foreigner had taken a photograph of Yogesh Pore near his shop about a fortnight back.

"Yogesh had later showna coin to me claiming that the foreigner had given it to him as a gift. Though I could not make out the denominations on the coin on which the words United States of America were imprinted, Yogesh said the foreigner had assured that the coin was worth Rs 1,000," he said.

A neighbouring woman, who claims to have seen Yogesh conversing with the foreigner in Tulshibaug area at the time, vouched that she had noticed the same foreigner loitering in the Kasture Chowk area near the residences of the missing boys around 4 pm yesterday.Rahul Honrao’s father, Satish said Rahul had left his residence around 8.30 pm saying that one of his friends was waiting for him outside and did not return.

"My wife became anxious when Rahul did not return till 9.30 pm but I convinced her that he might be playing. We came to know that other children were also missing when we started a search for Rahul after 11.30 pm. Panicked since the children did not return throughout the night, all of us went to lodge a police complaint thismorning. The children made two telephone calls to our neighbour Mhangare, one around 8 am and the second around 8.45 am to tell us that they were safe. However, when we asked them where they were, they said they did not know the name of the area in which they were," he recalled.

"My sons are also the friends of the missing children. They would have also gone with them had I not sent them to Hadapsar for a change for a couple of days," said an anxious neighbour Sanjay Supekar.