Title - Armed with CCTV footage, cops rescue kidnapped child

Mumbai/Haridwar  :Footage from closed circuit televisions (CCTVs) installed at the Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) helped the police rescue a three-year-old girl kidnapped from the railway station a month ago. The police said today that the victim, Sangeeta Pawar, was rescued from the Haridwar bus stand. Her kidnapper Raju Kallu Gaud, resident of Shyam Nagar village in Bhopal, has been arrested.Two picket constables, Pankaj Giri and Dilwar, posted at the Haridwar bus stand, noticed a person carrying away a child on his shoulder in a suspicious manner. Their suspicion grew as they had seen on television footage of the abducted child from the Mumbai railway station, which was quite similar to the child and the kidnapper.With the suspected person failing to give a satisfactory explanation, the constables took him to the Mayapur police post where, following investigations by Sub Inspector Santosh Singh Kunwar, suspect Raju confessed to abducting the child from CST, Mumbai. Raju further revealed that he had abducted the child in order to make her a beggar.Prabhat Kumar, Commissioner, Government Railway Police, told reporters in Mumbai that a police team has been sent to Uttarakhand to bring the girl to Mumbai. "A team is being sent to Haridwar and as soon as we confirm the identity of the suspect, we will take his custody," Kumar added.

Earlier this week, the police released footage of the kidnapping to the media after failing to make any headway in the case. According to the police, the kidnapping happened on the intervening night of June 9 and 10 after the victim's parents and siblings missed the train to their hometown in Parbhani. The family, which works as labourers in Mumbai, decided to stay at the station platform before trying to board the train the following day. However on June 10, the family realised that their youngest child was missing and filed a complaint with the police.

Investigators pored through footage from several CCTV cameras installed at different parts of the CST station to map the movement of the kidnapper. Piecing together the incident, the police said the man got off a train and wandered near the waiting room of the railway station before sidling besides the sleeping family around 2 am on June 10. The child’s parents, who are in Mumbai and watched the news on television, confirmed that it was their daughter Sangeeta who was rescued by the Uttarakhand authorities, the police said.

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June 10: Sangeeta (3) kidnapped by an unidentified man when she was sleeping with her parents, contract labourers from Maharashtra, on the platform at Mumbai's Chhattrapati Shivaji Terminus July 6: The Railway Police releases photograph and CCTV footage of a limping man alighting from a train and wandering around the station before taking the child away July 7: Child traced to Haridwar, rescued; alleged kidnapper Raju arrested