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2 women assaulted for ‘child-lifting’ in Okhla
Two women suspected to be kidnapping a child from Sanjay Colony in south Delhi’s Okhla were beaten up by local residents on Friday evening, the police said on Saturday
Two women suspected to be kidnapping a child from Sanjay Colony in south Delhi’s Okhla were beaten up by local residents on Friday evening, the police said on Saturday.
The two women, who are cousins and in their 30s, were rescued by the police, but were booked for kidnapping and arrested. They were later released on bail.
Chinmoy Biswal, deputy commissioner of police (south-east), said that the parents of a three-year-old boy had told investigators that the two women were walking away with the child, which prompted the arrest of the cousins.
The incident comes just a week after a 26-year-old pregnant and speech-impaired woman was thrashed by a mob on suspicion of child lifting in east Delhi’s Mandoli Extension. In that case, the police had said the woman was innocent, and had arrested five people for the assault after analysing videos of the incident.
The boy’s father told the media that he was returning from work in the evening when he noticed the two women hurrying away with his son.
“We intercepted them and saved my son before calling the police,” said the father.
Another eyewitness said that the older of the two women asked her cousin to pick up the boy in her arms rather than walking with him. “That made us certain that the women were kidnappers,” said the man.
But videos of the incident showed the cousins — one of them holding her own toddler son in her arms — walking as a mob followed them, intermittently slapping the duo.
As the cousins were slapped, mostly by women in the mob, they cried that they were innocent and that they were just looking to earn some money. But the assault continued till the police intervened and took the women away.
The two women are residents of NTPC Gate in south Delhi’s Badarpur and are natives of Gonda Basti in Uttar Pradesh. Police said they did not receive any serious injuries in the beating. The police said that they were still probing if the women had actually tried to kidnap the child.
