Thane, Jun 4: The Mumbra police in Thane scanned footage from 948 CCTV cameras to trace a missing seven-year-old girl, who was later found safe in Badlapur and told investigators she had run away to escape alleged ill-treatment at home, officials said on Thursday.
The girl, a resident of the Diva area, went missing on the evening of May 28, prompting the police to register a kidnapping case and form six teams to launch a massive search operation, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone-I), Balasaheb Patil.
The first breakthrough came the next day, with a surveillance camera in the neighbourhood capturing her. With the help of 67 more such cameras, police found on May 30 that the girl was at Diva railway station. She then boarded a local train with an unidentified man, the official said.
The teams were rushed to various stations in the area. CCTV footage showed the duo alighting at Ambernath station before boarding another train to Badlapur, where they got off at 12.17 am on May 31.
“Our 45-member police contingent launched an inquiry in Badlapur and finally traced the girl to the house of a 35-year-old man named Sumit Shantaram Jadhav,” the official said, adding that the six teams went through recordings from a staggering 948 surveillance cameras.
The girl was safe in the house with Jadhav’s three minor children. Jadhav told the police that he had been living separately from his wife for the past year and a half following disputes over childcare. According to police, Jadhav said his own daughter had previously been a victim of abuse and that he wanted to ensure the girl’s safety.
The girl told the police that she had run away from home because her parents allegedly ill-treated her and gave her too many household chores, the official said.
“It was a battle against time. Tracing a missing seven-year-old in a densely populated railway network with zero initial physical evidence is an investigator’s worst nightmare,” he said. (PTI)
