The hunt for the four-year-old boy who had gone missing from Nagpada has come to a standstill. A team of four officers from the Nagpada police that was sent to Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh on May 10 has returned to the city empty-handed.
The team was sent to Varanasi to conduct an investigation and trace four-year-old Gulfam Rasul, who went missing on April 24 while playing with his sister Tarannum (6) and their friend Kulsum Khan. Four days after going missing, the two girls escaped from the clutches of their abductors who had taken the children to Varanasi and were brought back home.
An officer in the Nagpada police said enquiries and investigations in Varanasi had not yielded results. “We got some reports about a young boy being seen in various areas in the city and also in the outskirts but these turned out to be false alarms,” he said. The officer added that Tarannum and Kulsum also could not give many details about their abductors.
A woman who offered them chocolates and ice cream allegedly lured the children away from their house. From Morland road in Nagpada, the children were taken in a cab where they met with another woman and were taken to a room in Kurla in which a man locked them up. The children were allegedly kept locked up for two days, beaten up and denied food before being taken to Varanasi. “The children are very young and were also beaten and threatened by their abductors and most likely drugged too so they are unable to give us concrete details. We even took them to areas in Kurla but they could not pinpoint to any specific house or even a neighbourhood,” he said.
When asked whether the police had sketches of the abductors the police said they had been able to gain rough sketches with the help of CCTV recording but these have been of no help. “We have no more leads to follow and hence our team has returned from Varanasi. For now, the investigation has come to rest,” the officer said said.
