CHENNAI: Two days after 3-year-old M Sridhar went missing from the MMC suburban station near Chennai Central, Government Railway Police (GRP) have obtained CCTV footage showing a young woman coaxing the boy away into a Nellore bound train.
Sridhar’s parents Murugamuthu and Radhi landed here on Sunday with his two brothers from Thoothukudi to spend their vacation with their relatives in VOC Nagar, Washermenpet. While transiting at MMC station, Sridhar went missing. Relatives and the police suspected that he was either kidnapped or had boarded a train to Nellore, which was at the platform then.
The CCTV grab at 8:21 am, around the time Sridhar went missing shows a woman, dressed in a red colour saree and carrying a girl child on her hip, gradually coaxing young Sridhar to platform number 11. GRP sources said the woman boarded the train to Nellore, and that a special team had been dispatched to the Andhra city on Tuesday morning in search of the missing child. All station masters on the Chennai-Nellore route have been sent a photograph of the kid and have been instructed to intimate in case they spot him, GRP sources said.
A senior GRP official said it did not appear to be a case of organised kidnapping. “The CCTV footage shows a woman in a rural attire who looks quite poor. She is gradually coaxing the child who was standing without any elders. It looks more like a case of concern or mistaken identity,” he added.