Thrissur: Three classmates – two girls and a boy, all aged 14 – who went missing from Koorkenchery in Thrissur on Tuesday morning, were traced to Panvel near Mumbai.
The children reportedly told the police that they wanted to live a 'free life'. After Mumbai, they were planning to visit Delhi.
“It seems they had planned their journey. They carried neatly packed travel bags,” a relative of one of the children told Onmanorama. “But they never thought that the missing case would be widely circulated through the social media.”
Social media does the trick
On Tuesday, instead of going to school, the Class 9 students of JPE School, Koorkenchery, headed to Thrissur, from where they boarded a train to Panvel.
By Wednesday evening, they tried to rent a hotel room in Panvel. The receptionist felt something odd and alerted a Keralite, Sajeer, a coconut trader based in Panvel.
The children tried to mislead Sajeer by telling him they were from Kannur. But he had already seen the posters of the missing children that were sent to him by a relative in Kerala. He immediately contacted the local Malayali association, the Panvel Police, the RPF and a relative of one of the children.
“The children are in the safe custody of the RPF now,” said a source in the Police Commissionerate, Thrissur. “The Thrissur city police commissioner contacted his Panvel counterpart. Two police constables and the parents of a girl will fly to Mumbai at 6 am on Thursday to bring them back.”
Well-planned getaway
The students are fast friends. “They stay in the same locality,” said the relative. “The girls left for school together and we confirmed it from CCTV footage. But they did not reach the school. Their mobile phones were switched off. One of the girls had taken Rs 40,000 from her house. The police said they switched off the phones in the Thrissur Town.”
The parents of the teenagers knew they were missing around 5.30 pm. “At first, we thought they might have gone to some friend’s place. Later, we contacted the school authorities only to realise that they did not reach there,” the relative said.
'School authorities failed to inform'
Meanwhile, the parents said that the school authorities shouted at them for registering a missing case with the Nedupuzha Police. They alleged the school authorities were more concerned about the reputation of the institution than finding the kids.
