E-Paper
4-year-old abducted in Delhi, sold three times before rescue in UP: Police
Investigators said a couple who finally paid ₹4.5 lakh for the boy had wanted a healthy child since their own 18-year-old son is physically challenged.
Kidnapped while playing outside his home in north Delhi’s Bhalswa Dairy last week, a four-year-old boy was sold three times before being rescued by the police from Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday, police said.
Investigators said a couple who finally paid ₹4.5 lakh for the boy had wanted a healthy child since their own 18-year-old son is physically challenged.
The kidnapped boy lives with his parents in Bhalswa Dairy. His father does odd jobs while his mother is a homemaker.
On January 31, he was playing outside his home when he went missing. His mother approached the police after which a kidnapping case was registered and the investigators began scanning CCTV footage, said DCP Gaurav Sharma (outer north district).
“Footage from one of the cameras showed a woman taking away the child. We identified her as 28-year-old Rummy, who lives in the same neighbourhood,” said the DCP.
Rummy told police she had allegedly kidnapped the child at the behest of a man, Kapil, who lives in Hapur. The police went on to arrest Kapil and his wife and from them learnt that they had sold the child to a man on whose demand they had outsourced the work to Rummy. Kapil had been paid ₹70,000 for this work, police said.
That middleman is on the run, a reason why the police did not identify him for the media.
But following the chain, the police reached a couple in Bulandshahar who had finally bought the child for ₹4.5 lakh, the DCP said. While the husband remains on the run, the 50-year-old wife, Sunita, was arrested and the boy rescued at her instance on Tuesday.
Another investigator said the couple had been wanting a healthy son. “Whether this couple asked the middleman to kidnap a child or arrange one by other means will be confirmed when we arrest the two absconding suspects,” said the investigator, adding the middleman’s arrest and interrogation will shed light on whether he was operating a child-lifting racket.
