Government Railway Police teams investigating the case of a missing four-year-old boy from Chennai Central station on Sunday are working on a computer-generated image of a woman, who was seen walking with the boy. The visual was taken from CCTV footage.
Five special teams of the GRP are now probing the case, which is suspected to be a kidnap. The boy, Sridhar Murugan, went missing around 8.15 a.m. on Sunday from platform number 13. He was with his family — parents, two elder brothers, an uncle and an aunt — on the way to board a suburban train to Washermanpet.
Footage obtained from a CCTV camera facing platform 14 showed a woman clad in a red sari carrying an infant and walking with a little boy. The boy’s parents, Murugan and Rathi, have said the child in the footage is their son Sridhar, who was then clad in a green and blue striped shirt and denim shorts.
The main hurdle in the process of generating the image is that the CCTV grab obtained is of poor quality making it difficult for investigators to clearly see the facial features of the suspect.
Police teams on Wednesday searched Gummidipoondi and Kancheepuram railway lines and platforms following information that a child was spotted alone in the area. But the searched proved futile. Teams are also combing Nellore in a bid to track the suspect.
This is the second case of a child going missing in Chennai Central this year. On March 9, an unidentified woman walked away with a five-month-old girl sleeping next to her parents Raja and Padma in the station.
Police are exploring the possibility of a child kidnapping gang operating in the station.