Mumbai Crime: Cops arrest 3 kidnappers after 10-day chase across 6 districts

Police officers with the rescued kids and their parents. Pic/Rajesh Gupta

The Mumbai police on Wednesday arrested three kidnappers after tracking them for 10 days across different districts. One other accused in the case is absconding. Cops said that as per preliminary investigation, the accused had kidnapped two minors to use them in begging.

As per the complainant, mother of the two minors, the kidnappings took place on December 4. In her statement to the police, she said that she had come to Mumbai recently with her two kids and that she had travelled with another couple. She further said that she and her children lived with the couple on the platform at Kanjurmarg station. On December 4, she had left to get some medicines for her kids but when she returned she found both her kids and the couple missing. She immediately went to Kanjurmarg police station and the police accordingly registered a case against unknown people under Sections 363 (kidnapping) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.

Police officers scanned CCTV footage from the station and spotted the accused couple with the kidnapped kids. The accused were seen taking a Kalyan-bound local train from the station. Cops also checked CCTV footage from Kalyan station and learnt that the accused had met two other men and then taken an express train towards Pune.

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"As the accused took an express train, we checked footage from all the stations where the train halted. We saw them boarding a Kolhapur-bound train from Pune but lost track of them thereafter," said a police officer from the Special Investigation Team formed to track the kidnappers. Later the cops got the tower location of one of the accused in Kolhapur and a team was dispatched there. The team went to Sangli, Ahmednagar and Solapur districts following the kidnappers.

Meanwhile, the police got information that one of the accused was from Ahmednagar and has a past criminal record. Another team of officers went there and checked with the nomadic community that the accused belonged to. One of the community members shared the contact of the employer of the accused.

On December 14, the team in Ahmednagar got a tip-off from the employer about one of the accused coming there. The cops laid a trap and arrested Harshad Kale, 35, the main accused in the case. His wife is still at large. On the same day, Mumbai police also received information that the kids were spotted in Aurangabad. The cops there in an operation rescued the kids and arrested Chandu Kale, 54, and Tarabai Kale, 40.

Speaking about the case, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone 7) Purushottam Karad said, "It's still early to say if the accused were aware of cops chasing them. It was a challenging operation. Our officers took exceptional efforts and inquired with over 1,000 families in 6 districts to crack the case."