Four days after two-year-old Vaishnavi was kidnapped at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST), the Mumbai Crime Branch and the Government Railway police on Wednesday rescued her at a construction site at Wadkhal Naka in Panvel and handed here over to her mother. The police arrested Vijay Basvant (25) and his wife Supriya, who had kept the girl at their shanty.
Investigations revealed that the Basvants had arrived from Gadchiroli on the night of August 28 by Geetanjali Express, and had spent the night at CST. In the early hours, they took Vaishnavi with them while her mother Varsha Dhavase was asleep.
Ms. Dhavase had an argument with her husband Santosh at their Oshiwara slum colony residence, and she had left home with her daughter to catch a train to her parents’ house in Buldhana district of Marathwada. However, they missed the late night train to Buldhana, and decided to sleep at CST. When Ms. Dhavase woke up the next morning, she found her daughter missing. She lodged a complaint at CST police station.
According to Niket Kaushik, Commissioner, Government Railway Police, the couple had confessed to the crime and claimed that they liked Vaishnavi and therefore kidnapped her to raise her as their third child. The couple has two children who live with their grandmother. The police said they do not trust the couple’s story and will conduct further investigations to find out the real motive. Solving the case was a challenge. Though the couple was captured by CCTV cameras while lifting the girl, the video quality was poor. Five police teams were set up by the Mumbai Crime Bsranch and the GRP to trace the child.
“The couple had boarded a taxi from CST and went to Masjid Bunder. From there, they had boarded a train to Dadar and from Dadar, they hired a taxi for Wadala railway station and got into a train to Panvel. At Panvel, they hired an auto to their home,” said Deputy Commissioner Rupali Ambure.
“We questioned nearly 100 taxi drivers and over 350 conductors to find out if anyone remembered seeing Vaishnavi with a couple. We reached Panvel where an auto driver recognised Vaishnavi and informed the police that he had left the couple with the child at Wadkhal Naka,” Ms. Ambure said, adding the auto driver did not suspect anything as the child was not crying and seemed happy.
Mr. Kaushik said this is the fourth incident of child kidnapping reported at CST in the past one year.
The writer is a freelance journalist
