Ludhiana: Expecting miracle, says father of toddler missing for a year

The Government Railway Police have been clueless since Khushi, then 7-month-old, was abducted from Ludhiana railway station in June last year

It has been almost one year since a seven-month-old girl, Khushi, was kidnapped from the Ludhiana railway station but the Government Railway Police (GRP) isn’t anywhere close to finding out what happened to her.

On June 30, 2024, the seven-month-old girl was taken away by someone when the family was asleep at the Ludhiana railway station.

Khushi’s father Chandan Prasad, who hails from Chhapra Bihar and works at a garments factory here, said, “It has been a year now. I don’t know where my daughter is. The police keep saying they are working on the case. But there is no clue. She must have grown by now. Her face would have changed a little by now. We feel helpless.”

On June 30 last year, the victim’s family had returned late at night from a trip to Vaishno Devi in Jammu and Kashmir and as it was too late to find conveyance to their home in Basti Jodhewal, they decided to sleep at the platform and leave at dawn. Khushi was lying with her mother. But sometime before the crack of dawn she noticed that the toddler was missing. She hasn’t seen her daughter ever since.

Khushi is his youngest kid, the other two being a seven-year old daughter and a five-year-old son. Prasad finds himself at odds between the helplessness in finding his daughter and parent’s undying hope of getting back his kid.

“How can we lose hope as long as we are alive? I don’t know how, but I hope that someday a miracle will happen and I will see her somewhere,” he said. He keeps looking for his daughter in every little girl he sees, “Who knows, she may be with someone and I may just bump into her,” he said.

While the platform is covered by a dozen cameras, the one that covered the spot where the family was resting had been out of service that night and the police couldn’t find who took away the toddler. “We have tried a lot to figure out who kidnapped the girl, but so far it is a dead end,” said inspector Palwinder Singh, station house officer, GRP station.

“The camera at that spot during those hours had some technical problem. There are around 48 cameras at the station and one or two of those can and do face technical issues at times. That is the nature of it. They get functional in hours,” he added.

A senior police officer, who has served in the Punjab Police’s criminal investigation agency (CIA), said while seeking anonymity, “In such cases, the first 24-48 hours are crucial. Whatever is possible is done in that period. Most of the kidnapping cases in trains or stations have been solved within 24-48 hours only.”