The mother of a four-year-old girl who went missing on May 26 is now sitting on a dharna demanding a probe into the disappearance of her children, including two others who were allegedly kidnapped in 2012. The girl had allegedly gone missing around 6 p.m. from Jantar Mantar amid scores of people, including protesters and the police.
Lakshmi Devi (name changed) sat next to Ritu’s (name changed) pink bag and her pet bird at Jantar Mantar, where she has been protesting for nearly three years. “I had gone to relieve myself just 100 metres away and when I came back, she wasn’t there,” Ms. Devi told The Hindu .
‘Helped cops’
Ms. Devi said this is the third child she has been separated from in the last five years. The other two children — Vicky and Gudia — were allegedly kidnapped in 2012 from Indore. Ms. Devi’s brother S.K. Sharma (name changed) (55), who claimed that all his five children and wife have been kidnapped over the years, alleged that his family has been targeted because he helped the police nab 26 suspected SIMI terrorists in 2008-09. Since 2014, the two have been sitting at Jantar Mantar hoping to get justice.
Talking about Ritu, she angrily looks at the dharna being staged by supporters of Haryana’s Baba Rampal opposite theirs — demanding CBI intervention in the criminal case he’s involved in for which he’s lodged in jail — alleging that they might have picked her up.
Sharing the history of discord between the two, she said in 2016, members of the Baba Rampal dharna had convinced her to join them and she met a man from the group who promised to marry her. “He told me he’ll marry me, we got physically involved; later he stopped coming to Jantar Mantar,” she said, adding that after the incident, the two groups stopped communicating.
Rape attempt
On the evening of May 25, a day before Ritu went missing, Ms. Devi said Baba Rampal’s group parked their vehicle in front of their demonstration spot. When she and her brother objected to it, they abused them and tried to force her into the car in an attempt to rape her, she alleged. “They tried to push me into the vehicle and when my brother resisted, they beat him up and he was hospitalised for two days,” she said, showing injury marks on her own body. The police was then called who successfully pacified both the groups. The next day, Ritu was allegedly kidnapped.
Ms. Devi’s brother Mr. Sharma, in his complaint, mentioned the attempt to rape and the four-year-old’s kidnapping but the police at Parliament Street police station allegedly registered an FIR under Section 363 (punishment for kidnapping). The mother searched for her daughter till the wee hours of Saturday but she could not be found. “We took Ms. Devi in our car to several places in New Delhi to look for the girl but couldn’t trace her,” said a senior police officer.
Charges denied
Responding to the charges levelled against them by Ms. Devi, supporters of Baba Rampal denied the alleged rape attempt but said they were sorry for beating them. “She had no relationship with any of our members and no one ever touched her with any wrong intentions. But we are very sorry for beating them up. The matter became heated when they didn’t allow us to park our vehicle on the street in front of them. They threw stones at us and abused us too,” said Sandeep Sejwal, a supporter of Baba Rampal, who has been a part of the demonstration ever since it started in 2014.
The police said they have formed teams to look for Ritu and are investigating the matter.
