The Dabeerpura police on Wednesday arrested a woman for kidnapping a four-month-old baby boy and learned to their shock that she did so to gift the infant to her childless friend. The tiny tot has been handed over to his parents.
According to police, the accused, Domalapally Bhagya, a contract worker of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, was caught following leads provided by CCTV footage.
The baby's mother Manjulatha, wife of Sachin, a beggar from Hubli in Karnataka,
lodged a complaint with the police on July 10 after finding her son, Mahesh, missing. The woman, her husband and their son were fast asleep beside an auto-repair shop under the Dabeerpura flyover bridge in the intervening night of July 5.
When Majulatha woke up around 6 a.m. the next morning, she found to her shock that her son was missing.
During the course of investigation, the police retrieved CCTV footage and found a woman, clad in a blue saree, moving suspiciously in the area around 6 a.m. She was carrying what looked like a baby in her hands. Upon further investigation, the police identified her as Bhagya.
Police officials said she had befriended one Narasimha, an ex-supervisor. Whenever they met, he used to lament that he had no child. Bhagya saw some beggars sleeping under the flyover with a child. She immediately hatched a plan to kidnap the baby and hand it over to Narasimha.
When Bhagya informed the same to Narasimha and his friend Ramulu, both of them encouraged her. As per their plan, on July 6, Bhagya kidnapped the child and gave it to Narasimha at his residence.
During interrogation, the accused confessed to her crime. The police, who rescued the child, sent him to a hospital for primary medical assistance and later, reunited him with his parents. They also took Narasimha and Ramulu into custody.