BENGALURU: A three-day nightmare for a blind couple, as they roamed around the city, visiting bus stops to hunt for their missing eight-month-old son, ended on a happy note on Tuesday as they were called to the Upparpet police station and reunited with their child.
The baby was handed over to the police by a woman named Parvathamma . The couple had alleged that an unidentified woman took away their child when they were at the Kempegowda Bus Station on April 27.
Police officials said that the couple had arrived in Bengaluru from Devadurga in Raichur district and were sitting at the platform in the bus station when an unidentified woman approached them on the pretext of helping their child, who was crying for want of water. She stayed with them for a brief time and then told them that she would take the baby to get it some water and left. When she did not return after several hours, the helpless parents panicked and with the help of passersby, approached the police to file a case. On Tuesday afternoon, Parvathamma, a resident of Kengeri, approached the police with the baby and said that an unidentified woman had approached her at Kengeri Bus station and asked her to hold on to the child while she went to the washroom. The woman never returned to claim the child, Parvathamma told the police.
By a stroke of luck, Parvathamma had come across a picture of the baby in a newspaper that she was holding at the time and realised that the child had been kidnapped. A police officer privy to the case said, “We are probing the case in all angles and also questioning Parvathamma. The blind couple runs a music orchestra.”
Speaking to The New Indian Express, Basavaraju, the father of the kidnapped baby, said, “Around 7.30 am, we were waiting for a bus when a woman helped us lift our luggage. She took my son in her arms three times and returned him before taking him away saying that she would get him some water to drink. We thought she was sympathetic to us and did not suspect anything,” he said.
After sometime, his wife started asking the woman to return the baby and when there was no reply, she was shocked. “When the harried parents reached the police station, they were initially shocked when the policemen alleged that they had sold their baby and were staging the entire complaint. “I was about to leave the station when a woman sub-inspector realised our situation and took down the case,” he said. The couple spent the next few nights roaming bus stops across the city to search for their baby before the same policewoman, who took their compalint, called them with the good news.