The Hindu : New Delhi News : Child kidnapping case: Police team sent to Orissa

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Feb 02, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Child kidnapping case: Police team sent to Orissa

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, FEB. 1. No breakthrough has been made in the case of kidnapping of the 18-month-old son of a senior executive with a multinational company allegedly by his maid from Srinivaspuri in South Delhi this past Monday. While the motive behind the abduction is not yet clear, a police team has been sent to Orissa to trace the suspect.

The police said no ransom call had been made so far to the parents of Arpit, who was allegedly abducted by the maid, Shabitri. However, they are not ruling out kidnapping for ransom as one of the motives. They are also trying to find out whether it is the handiwork of any gang which is into abducting and selling male children.

Enquires have revealed that Shabitri had worked in Dwarka and Hari Nagar before taking up the job in the Batra Flats house of Arpit's father, Arvind Dewan, a software engineer with Coca-Cola. According to the Dewan couple, the maid was very affectionate towards Arpit. He had also started liking her within a few days.

The police have collected details about Shabitri's antecedents from the Vinita Placement Agency, through which she got the job at Arvind's residence. But they are not sure whether the information provided by her to the agency was correct. The police have recovered some letters from Shabitri's belongings reportedly written in Oriya, from which they are trying to get some clues to her whereabouts.

In her search, the police are checking night-shelters and places where people coming from other States normally put up. They are also contacting various domestic help agencies to find out whether anyone of them had come across her. Besides, they are keeping a close watch over Orissa-bound trains suspecting that Shabitri might try to flee to her hometown with the child.

The incident occurred on Monday afternoon when Arvind and his wife, Bharti, who works in a non-government organisation named Population International Service, were not at home. Their elder son, Ayush, was away in school. When he returned, he found the door of his house locked, after which a neighbour called up Bharti to tell her that Shabitri was not at home.

Bharti returned and found that the house had been ransacked and Shabitri was missing along with her son Arpit. She called up Arvind, after which the police were called in.

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