Woman arrested within 3 hours of kidnapping child

A 19-year-old woman was arrested for kidnapping her ex-boyfriend’s nephew, retaliating against his family for opposing their relationship.

Mumbai: A 19-year-old woman was arrested within three hours of her allegedly kidnapping her former boyfriend’s three-year-old nephew on Saturday. The police said that the accused committed the crime to teach his parents a lesson in retaliation for opposing her relationship with her former boyfriend due to differences in religion. After scanning CCTV footage, the police traced her phone to her house and rescued the child.

The kidnapper, in a costume from Crime Patrol

The accused, Sabiya Shaikh, who had previously worked in Bollywood films and a crime web series, was arrested and produced before the court on Sunday where she was remanded to police custody. According to Sachin Sanap, assistant police inspector of the Waliv police station, the mother of the child, Priti Gautam, had dropped her son off at around 8am at a playgroup school on Saturday. When she returned to pick him up at 11am, the teacher informed her that at 9am, a woman, who claimed she was sent by Gautam to give medicine to the child, had already picked him up. The parents then complained at the Waliv police. A case of kidnapping against an unidentified woman was registered.

Sanap said that they scanned a CCTV footage outside the playgroup where they saw a woman leaving with the kid. When the child’s father, Dinesh Gautam, saw the CCTV footage recording, he recognised the woman as the Sabiya Shaikh, former girlfriend of his brother, Brijesh, 25.

Sanap said that Shaikh confessed to the crime, defending that her relationship with Brijesh had broken up due to the pressure from his family as she belonged to a different religion. “In order to teach a lesson to Brijesh’s family, she kidnapped the child,” said Sanap.

After tracing the mobile location of accused, the police reached Shaikh’s house and arrested her under section 137 (kidnapping) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The child was recused and handed over to his parents.