Thiruvananthapuram: The two-year-old child of migrant parents, Mary, who went missing from midnight on Monday was found abandoned in an obsolete drain near the Kochu Veli railway station. The child was quickly transferred to the General Hospital from where, after preliminary treatment, was shifted to SAT Women and Child Hospital in the Medical College campus.
General eduction minister V Sivankutty, who was at the General Hospital, said that the child's condition was stable. "She looks shaken but her condition is satisfactory according to doctors," the minister said. The girl also showed symptoms of slight dehydration.
It were two police officers who spotted the child in the dry trench that once was a storm water drain. The place is overgrown with weeds and is largely deserted. However, there are hutments on the other side of the railway track. Manorama News had reported that some local people had heard the cry of a child from across the railway track.
It is still not clear when the child was placed in the drain as the police had combed these areas earlier in the day. "We need to get more clarity on this issue and it can be said with any certainty only after a through analysis," DCP Nidhin Raj told reporters. He did not say how the policemen came upon the child but said that the use of drones had helped.
What is also not clear is how the girl was abducted. The police are not sure whether the child was lured by her captors or was stealthily taken away from amid the sleeping family. The child's parents Amardeep and Rabeena Devi are Bihar natives. "There are no CCTV cameras in the area and so we are not sure how the child was taken," the DCP said. The girl was sleeping near her mother and brothers close to the bus stand near the All Saints College before she was found missing.
The child's brother had told the plice that he had seen a man in a yellow scooter. Later, another person had said that he had seen two men in a two-wheeler with a child sandwiched in between. He was not sure of the colour of the scooter.
The police are still following these leads. The DCP said all the vhicles that moved between All Saints College and Chakkai since the time te child went missing were subjected to through checks.
