GRP busts begging racket, arrests woman for kidnapping toddler

Mumbai: A 33-year-old woman was arrested by the Borivali Government Railway Police (GRP) on Saturday for allegedly running an inter-state begging racket

Mumbai: A 33-year-old woman was arrested by the Borivali Government Railway Police (GRP) on Saturday for allegedly running an inter-state begging racket. The police also took custody of her minor daughters involved in the crime.

GRP busts begging racket, arrests woman for kidnapping toddler

The woman and her daughters, aged 10-year-old and 17-year-old had come to Mumbai three days ago and befriended a couple outside the Borivali railway station and stayed with them on the pavement before kidnapping their three-year-old boy to sell him to the begging mafia in Delhi for ₹50,000.

Although the police officers are not clear about how many times the trio had visited the city, they said that the three have been playing a major role in supplying infants and toddlers with begging rackets.

According to Anil Kadam, senior police inspector of Borivali GRP, the incident took place on Friday night when the toddler’s parents approached the police to complain that their kid was missing. Kadam said that at 8pm - soon after they received the complaint, they carried out a massive search across all 8 platforms and the surrounding locality in the premises of the Borivali railway station. “All our teams were pressed into action and as the parents of the kid are pavement dwellers, mostly spending nights outside the railway station, we scanned recordings of the CCTVs around the footpaths,” said Kadam.

When the search at Borivali did not yield any result, the GRP officials scanned the CCTV recordings of all the railway stations of the city to find out if the child was kidnapped and taken somewhere else.

The police had also asked the parents of the kid to look at the recordings so they could identify the accused who stole their kid.

“At Dadar station, we saw the kid being taken by a small girl. The parents of the kid immediately recognised the girl as the daughter of the woman, who stayed with them for three days,” said Kadam.

As revealed by the couple to the police, the woman Anju Kisan Valmiki had approached them three days ago and said that she had come from Delhi. The woman and her daughters had developed a friendship with the parents of the kid and had disappeared on the day their child had been kidnapped.

“We had learnt the name of the train the three were going to board with the kid and after laying a trap at the station, we arrested Valmiki and detained her daughters who have now been sent to the children’s home,” said Kadam.

On Saturday, after the three were brought to the police station they confessed to the crime and told the police that they were in Mumbai for the first time.

As soon as they landed at Borivali station they picked their target and befriended the kid’s parents. “On Friday, as soon as the kid was playing with the woman’s daughters, she lured him to the platform by offering to buy him a lollipop. The trio then boarded a Churchgate slow local train and left. They got off at Dadar station and waited for their train to Delhi to sell the child. They expected a sum of ₹50,000 from the begging mafia for the child, said a police officer.

“We assume that the trio had been to Mumbai before and kidnapped several kids. We are now questioning Valmiki to find out whether she has cases registered with her at other police stations in Mumbai or other parts of the country,” added Kadam.