Kidnapped toddler yet to be traced; no major leads, say cops

Five days after a three-month-old boy was abducted from Mahim, the police, along with the crime branch, have hit a dead end in their investigation. Police do not even know the full name of the accused, who has been identified only as Jaggu.

Five days after a three-month-old boy was abducted from Mahim, the police, along with the crime branch, have hit a dead end in their investigation. Police do not even know the full name of the accused, who has been identified only as Jaggu.

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“Our teams have gone to Jaggu’s friends’ homes. However, nothing has come of it,” said an officer from the Mahim police station, requesting anonymity. “As of now, our only hope of tracking him down is if he switches on his mobile phone, which has been switched off since Monday.”

Police suspect Jaggu is still within city limits and have formed a team to scan through several religious places in the city to see if he has taken refuge there for free meals. Even the crime branch, which is conducting a parallel investigation, has been unable to get any substantial leads.

“A major hurdle in tracking down the accused is that no one seems to know about his background. He came to sleep near the LJ Road [in Mahim], where the victim’s family resided. We don’t know what he did the rest of the time,” said inspector Jeetendra Bhobe of the Mahim police station.

Bhobe added that police were also exploring the possibility that Jaggu may have kidnapped the infant to spite the boy’s parents, with whom he had fought in the past. A few people in the area saw Jaggu take Maqdoom Shaikh, the kidnapped toddler, with him. But they assumed that Jaggu must have informed the child’s parents.

The incident took place on Monday evening when Mumtaz Shaikh, who works as a domestic help, reached her makeshift residence at Mahim to find her nine-year-old son Ramzan crying. The boy told Mumtaz that Jaggu slapped him and fled with Maqdoom. The woman called her husband, a daily wage labourer, and the couple approached the Mahim police. The police registered a formal complaint a day later.