Childless couple arrested for kidnapping kid

NEW DELHI: Nine years after he was kidnapped from a government hospital by a childless couple, a ten year-old boy was traced and reunited with his parents by the

NEW DELHI: Nine years after he was kidnapped from a government hospital by a childless couple, a ten year-old boy was traced and reunited with his parents by the east Delhi Police on Monday.

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The police have also arrested the couple, Mohammad Samin and Nargis, on charges of kidnapping and confining the child whom they had renamed as Samir. The boy’s parents, Afsar and Fareeda, had named him Shahid.

Shahid was one-and-half years old when he was kidnapped from Babu Jagjivan Ram Hospital. Police said Fareeda was expecting and visited the hospital for a checkup. She left Shahid sleeping on a bench and went to see the doctor. When she came back , Shahid was missing.

Rishipal, DCP (east), said Afsar, who runs has a mobile phone shop in Krishna Nagar, approached the police four months ago. He told the police that his son was kidnapped in 2007, when he lived in Jahangirpuri.

“Afsar told the police that someone he had met at a wedding told him that a child resembling his son had been seen in Seelampur area. He also gave the police a photo of his son that was taken some days before he was kidnapped,” said Rishipal.

The police formed three teams and launched a massive search operation across Seelampur and Krishna Nagar areas — one of the most densely populated areas of Delhi.

The teams went and checked thousands of houses and schools in an operation that continued for four months.

“We scoured all the schools in the area,” the DCP said.

On Monday, one of the teams found the boy at a MCD-run school in Seelampur. Afsar and Fareeda were called to the school and they identified him as their missing son, Shahid. In the school records, the boy was registered as Mohd Samir and his father’s name was given as Mohd Samin.

The boy took the police to his house in Gali No-1 in Shanti Mohalla.

“During interrogation, Samin and Nargis first claimed that they were the parents. But when we confronted them with evidence, they confessed to have kidnapped the child,” said a police officer.

They told their neighbours that the child was delivered in their ancestral village and had been living with his grandparents since.

The police are investigating if the couple was involved in other similar cases or not.