Kalyan police rescue baby kidnapped from MP, sold to teacher for ₹29L

Kalyan police rescue kidnapped 6-month-old baby from MP in 8 hours, arrest 6 involved. Baby sold for ₹29 lakh. Accused handed over to MP police.

THANE: The Kalyan police on Friday rescued a six-month-old baby boy who was kidnapped from Madhya Pradesh and arrested six persons involved in the kidnapping and sale of the baby within eight hours of being intimated about the case.

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The arrested accused were identified as Shrikrishna Patil, a Raigad-based teacher who allegedly bought the baby for ₹29 lakh; Amol Yerunkar, employee of a famous hospital in Mumbai, and his wife Arvi Yerunkar, who were in contact with Patil as well as the child lifters; Nitin Saini and Swati Soni alias Mehk Khan, who handled the baby in Kalyan; and rickshaw driver Pradip Kolambe, who ferried baby.

According to the police, when Patil, 53, a resident of Poladpur in Raigad district, recently met his former student Amol Yerunkar, he urged the latter to provide him with a baby aged six or seven months, for which he was willing to pay all his savings worth ₹29 lakh.

Yerunkar assured him of fulfilling his wish. He shared the idea of stealing a baby with his wife who spoke about it with Kolambe, her regular rickshaw driver, promising payment in lakhs. Kolambe then shared the idea Nitin Saini and Swati Soni, a couple in his neighbourhood in Kalyan who were originally from MP. The couple subsequently hatched a plan to kidnap a baby from Madhya Pradesh and conducted a recce with an accused arrested by the neighbouring state’s police.

On May 9, a complaint was filed with the Civil Line police station in Riva district of Madhya Pradesh about the kidnapping of a child belonging to a pavement dweller couple. Two bikers approached the couple that day and made off with their six-month-old child, said a police officer.

“The couple immediately reported the matter to the Civil Lines police station, based on which the police registered a kidnapping case. The bikers were identified and arrested with the help of CCTV footage soon after the incident. But by then, the kidnapped child had been sent to their accomplices in Kalyan,” said the police officer.

During interrogation, the bikers revealed that the baby had been handed over to Nitin Saini and Swati Soni in Kalyan. The Madhya Pradesh police then contacted their counterparts in Kalyan and informed them about the kidnapping.

In Kalyan, deputy commissioner of police Sachin Gunjal, assistant commissioner of police Kalyanji Ghete, and senior police inspector of Khadakpada police station Dr Amarnath Waghmod formed six teams to trace the accused and rescue the child.

The police soon located the Kalyan-based couple who said they had handed over the child to Kolambe, the rickshaw driver.

“We tracked and apprehended the rickshaw driver who had by then handed over the baby to the Yerunkars. By the time we reached the Yerunkars, the baby had already reached Shrikrishna Patil,” said Gunjal. “We cracked the case and rescued the child from a house in Sector 2 in Panvel within eight hours of receiving information,” he said.

Both the baby and the arrested accused have been handed over to Madhya Pradesh police.