Abduction of Nanjangud beggar’s daughter sparks fresh probe into child trafficking

Police questioning suspects, checking CCTV footage

The abduction of a beggar’s three-year-old daughter in Nanjangud earlier this week, about four years after her elder son was similarly kidnapped from the pavement near the Srikanteshwara Temple, has set the police on the path of a fresh investigation into a possible case of child trafficking.

The investigation into the abduction of Parvathi’s eight-month-old son in April 2016 had helped the police uncover a well-organised child trafficking racket, which also involved sale of new-borns from two private maternity hospitals in Mysuru to childless couples.

In her complaint to the Nanjangud police, Parvathi said she was approached by an unidentified man on Thursday asking her to give away her daughter to a childless couple. Minutes after she reproached the stranger and threw away the currency note he handed to her, Parvathi found her daughter missing. She lodged a complaint after she was unable to locate her.

Refusing to rule out the involvement of child traffickers in the abduction, the Nanjangud police’s investigation also involves looking for the whereabouts of the accused involved in the 2016 case in which a chargesheet had been filed and trial is under way.

The trial has not been continuing in view of the impact of COVID-19 on the courts. A special team has been formed to check the whereabouts of the accused, said Deputy Superintendent of Nanjangud police Prabhakar Rao Shinde.

According to preliminary investigation, the unidentified man was brought to the complainant by a local tea seller. “We have not arrested anybody, but are questioning the suspects and checking the CCTV footages”, he said.

Meanwhile, Parvathi’s elder son, who had been kidnapped in 2016, had been rescued along with 15 other trafficked children. Most of the other trafficked children had been sold from the maternity hospitals in Mysuru where unwed mothers had been brought for delivery.

Mysuru District Child Protection Officer S. Diwakar said the elder son of Parvathi was now in their custody in a children’s home. Though a DNA test had proved that Parvathi was his biological mother, he was not handed over to her as Parvathi was unable to convince the authorities that she would be able to provide food and shelter to him.

The Women and Child Welfare authorities had asked Parvathi to even entrust to the authorities her daughter, who had been kidnapped on Thursday. “Such children are vulnerable to abduction and trafficking”, Mr. Diwakar said.

Even though the trafficked children and the caregivers to whom they had been sold had developed a bond, the law did not recognise the same as the children had not been adopted in the legal manner.

After an elaborate rescue of the trafficked children, two of them were handed back to their biological mothers while six others were given in legal adoption to childless couples who had registered themselves for adoption as per the guidelines of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), functioning under the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development. Caregivers managed to secure the custody of three children through court orders while the others who had not been put up for adoption remain in different children’s homes in view of the visitation rights the caregivers had secured through courts.

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