Safala Naik, who recently lost her job as househelp, had taken the child from Malad to Thane when she was tracked down by the Malvani police
The child with her mother Pooja at Malvani police station on Friday
The Malvani police have arrested a woman on the charge of kidnapping a one-year-old girl. The woman told the police she committed the crime in desperation as she could not bear one.
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The police said accused Safala Naik, 24, was working as a househelp in Malad West but had recently lost her job. Earlier, she used to work at an actor’s home at Pushpa Park in Malad East. While she decided to return to her native place, she had one hitch.
Police said Naik had told her husband, who is in their hometown in Odisha, that she had delivered a baby girl a year ago. “Since she could not go empty-handed, she decided to steal a baby from an acquaintance,” said an officer from Malvani police station.
On Tuesday, Naik approached a tailor, Ashok Rathod, who would stitch her clothes saying she had been fired and did not have a place to stay for the night. Rathod and his wife Pooja took pity on Naik and let her put up at their home only to realise next morning that she had vanished with their one-year-old daughter Vaishnavi.
Rathod, 34, rushed to the police to lodge a complaint. “We got her call data records and traced her to Maitri Park in Thane,” said the officer.
A police team guided by DCP Vishal Thakur got the breakthrough when her phone call data showed repeated calls to one particular number.
The police found that the number belongs to a person who hails from the same place in Odisha as Naik. The person said Naik had sought shelter at their place, but they found her behaviour suspicious after seeing the child and drove her away. She was busted when she made a video call to that Odia acquaintance, when the person was being questioned by the police. The cops made screenshots from the call and traced her location.
Later, Naik told the police that she was wandering in Thane when a kind couple agreed to let her stay at their place. The cops then arrested Naik from the tenth floor of a building at Maitri Park where she was in deep sleep. DCP Thakur said the child was reunited with her parents.
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