Google Maps reunites father with daughter after four months

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New Delhi: Google Maps helped police reunite a father with his 12-year-old daughter who had gone missing in Delhi over four months ago, officials stated. According to the police, the 12-year-old girl in Holi on March 21 had taken an e-rickshaw near the Kirti Nagar furniture market. When the minor did not get down at the metro station, the driver asked her where she wanted to go, but she did not reply hence he took her to the Kirti Nagar police station at 8.33 pm, a senior officer said.

According to news agency, PTI, during an initial inquiry, the girl was unable to remember her house and just said she was from "Khurja" village and her father's name was Jeetan, the officer informed. Police started a search for her father in Khajuri Khas and Khureji areas of Delhi since their names are similar to the word 'Khurja', but the police were unable to find any records of missing complaints being filed. Following which, they took the girl to the nearby JJ colony, but no one could identify her.

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The minor girl, who is mentally-challenged, also stated that she had travelled by train to Delhi a couple of days ago with an uncle named 'Pintu', who took off her clothes in the train's washroom and left her there when she started crying, police informed. Her medical examination was conducted on March 22, and no sign of sexual assault was found. A case was registered under Section 354A (sexual harassment) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the POCSO acts and the girl was then handed over to an NGO named Nirmal Chhaya, the police said.

A police team then took the minor to Khurja village in Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr district on four different occasions, but they could not trace or find any lead on her family, Monika Bhardwaj, Deputy Commissioner of Police (West) said. "We kept trying to trace her family but could not get any lead. She was not being able to say the name of her village properly," Bhardwaj said. "The police team had gone to Khurja several times, but no one could recognise her there." On July 31, when a police team was taking the minor to Khurja again, a senior officer asked her the names of nearby areas of her village to which she said Sonbarsa was her mother's village and there was a place called Sakapar near her village.

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Thereafter, with the help of Google Maps, the police got to know that in Uttar Pradesh's Siddharthnagar district, there are villages with the name of Sonbarsa, Sakapar and "Kurja". Following which her family was also traced by the police. Her father Jeetan, a native of Kurja village, came to Delhi from Gorakhpur on August 1, the police informed. According to PTI, the father of the girl stated that he brought his daughter to the capital at the Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS) for her treatment. The girl went missing on Holi from his sister's house at JJ colony in Kirti Nagar, but he did not file any missing complaint, the police said.

Jeetan works at a scrap factory in Delhi, informed his wife, who lives at her parent's house in Sonbarsa, was mentally-challenged and had also gone to some random place around one-and-a-half years ago. "Around three-four months later, she was traced in Ludhiana in Punjab. Similarly, he thought that the police will find his daughter also." Jeetan, who also has a son and another daughter, informed there was no uncle by the name of Pintu, following which the case of sexual harassment was dropped, the police said.

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With inputs from PTI

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