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Three-year-old kidnapped, sold and rescued in Mumbai

Poornima Swaminathan / DNA

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 23:54 IST

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Mumbai: Six persons were arrested by the police on Wednesday for allegedly kidnapping a minor girl and then selling/ buying her, said police.

Preliminary police investigations revealed that three construction workers — Sumed Shaikh alias Kalu, 22, Farooq Shaikh, 22, and Maya Khatun, 19 — sold the three-year-old girl for a sum of Rs3,000 brothers Jamal Mullah, 32 and Nisar Sheikh, 30 and a 25-year-old lady, Tahima Khatun. Khatun lives with the brothers in Dombivli. All six of them have been arrested.

The victim, daughter of a construction worker, was rescued from Dombivli. The police are exploring all angles, including that of selling of the girl child for prostitution, begging, or child labour.

The incident came to light when the girl’s father, Shafiq Mohamed Shaikh, 22, who works at a construction site in Andheri along with the arrested construction workers, did not find his daughter at the caretaker’s hutment on Monday. On enquiring, the caretaker told him that his three colleagues had taken the girl away.

“The trio told the caretaker that since the father was busy, she should hand over the child to them. Since she knew them, she gave the child to them,” said a police officer from Amboli police station, where a case of kidnapping was registered.

Shocked, the father immediately called them up. “The trio told him that since the girl was crying, they had taken her to Bombay Central and assured him that they would return by evening,” said the officer. However, when they did not return, he rushed to the police station and registered a complaint. A police team immediately got cracking and traced the trio to Kalyan station by tracking their mobiles. A police team rushed there and arrested the trio. “During sustained interrogation, the trio spilled the beans. We rushed there and rescued the girl,” added the police officer.