THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A 5-year-old girl who went missing from Bengaluru on September 18 was rescued from Kaliyakkavilai on Thursday. The timely intervention of the Kaliyakkavilai police helped the girl reunite with her family.
The girl was found with a Kerala man at the Kaliyakkavilai bus stand on Wednesday early morning. The police patrol team grew suspicious with the man who was accompanied by a boy as well.
“He had a fractured hand with plastering. The girl child was weeping continuously and the man tried to pacify her in vain. We grew suspicious over their behaviour and questioned them,” an officer of the Kaliyakkavilai police station said.
The man told the police that he rescued the child from a beggar group in Bengaluru and took her along with him on the journey to Kerala.
He said he was waiting for his wife Esther Latha who was to arrive from Chennai after church prayers. However, in a friendly chat with the boy, the police gathered clues that the man befriended the girl child at a bus station.
Esther who arrived at the bus station was also taken into custody. The man, identified as Joseph John aka Jayakumar hails from Poovachal in Kattakada, is suspected to have kidnapped the girl from the Majestic bus terminal in Bengaluru from where she went missing.
Police suspect that Esther was also involved in the kidnapping. She might have left for Chennai from there, they said.
The boy was born in Joseph John’s second marriage with a woman in Kattakada. In 2015, he abandoned her and left for Bengaluru with the boy. There he married Esther Latha hailing from Andhra Pradesh, the woman who later joined him at the bus stand. They were to travel to Thirumala in Thiruvananthapuram..
The police traced the missing child’s family and handed her over to them on Thursday. The child’s mother Karthikeswari said that the toddler went missing from the Majestic Bus Station while the family was on a temple journey.
A missing case was filed with the Upparpet police station in Bengaluru on September 18. Karthikeswari was accompanied by her brother and Upparpet police to Kaliyakkavilai. The Upparpet police took Joseph John and Esther into custody.