VIJAYAWADA: A four-year-old girl, who went missing at Kanaka Durga temple here on Sunday morning, was traced by police special teams in 12 hours at Narasaraopet in Guntur district with the help of CCTV footage.
Police said they had traced the woman who abducted the girl. However, the woman said she thought the girl was a destitute and took her home to bring her up along with her own children. “I surrendered the child to the police after I came to know that her parents were looking for her,” she said.
The parents and relatives of the girl, Navya Sri, came to have darshan at Kanaka Durga temple after visiting Tirupati. “At around 8 am, the girl went missing when we reached Mallikharjuna Maha Mandapam (queue line complex). Immediately we rushed to the nearby help centre and appealed to the temple staff to make an announcement. But they did not respond. They even stated that the CCTV's installed in the temple were not functioning,’’ alleged Paidi Sridevi, the girl's mother.
Sridevi and her husband Paidi Raju then approached One Town police and sought their help to trace their daughter. They formed eight teams and launched a search for the girl at Pandit Nehru Bus Station (PNBS) and the railway station. Reacting to the allegations of the girl’s parents, officials of Durga temple clarified that soon after receiving information about the missing girl, announcements were made through the public address system at regular intervals.
"Usually, missing children are mostly found within the temple premises itself. For the first time, officials failed to trace the girl even after making frequent public announcements. We could not find the girl in the CCTV footage and asked the parents to approach the police,’’ said a temple official. He further said only three of 79 CCTV's at the temple were defunct. Meanwhile, police verified from CCTV footage at bus stations and railway stations and found that the girl was taken to Narsaraopet by a couple in a train.
According to the police, Challa Subbalakshmi, an ayah at a private hospital and a native of Narasaraopet, found Navya Sri at Mallikarjuna Maha Mandapam and took her along with her with an alleged intention to bring her up along with her other children. She asserted that her family did not have any other intention and only took her with them out of sympathy.
She claimed that she surrendered Navya Sri before DSP K Nageswara Rao after knowing the girl’s missing case being telecast by vernacular media.