THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Nearly 20 hours after she went missing from a wayside tent, a two-year-old girl, daughter of a nomadic couple from Bihar, was found in a deep drainage canal near a railway track here on Monday evening.
A police team, which was carrying out a search in the area, came across the child who was found lying in the drainage, police said.
They later shifted the girl to the nearby general hospital.
Television channels showed visuals of the police personnel running with the child in their hands and shifting her to their vehicle to take her to the hospital.
She was also given water by the police personnel in the vehicle.
The isolated area, where the girl was found, is not far away from the place from where she had gone missing while sleeping with her parents and siblings.
Confirming the successful tracing of the toddler, DCP Nidhinraj later told reporters that the first priority of the police is to give medical care to the child.
"We could find her alive... that is most important. The child seems to be ok. The rest of things we can tell after a detailed medical check up," he told the media.
General Education Minister V Sivankutty, who reached the General Hospital, said the child was found during a search carried out by the police in the area.
"It was an isolated area. A drainage canal was there. The police personnel found the child lying in the canal. They could shift the child to the hospital in 10 minutes," he said.
The minister also said she is safe and healthy but seemed to be frightened.
The child's parents, who had been at the Pettah police station since early morning, were in tears out of happiness after coming to know about her rescue.
They thanked the police with folded hands and teary eyes when they reached the hospital to meet the child.
The police are yet to divulge additional details.
However, a local woman resident told reporters that no one was in the area till this evening and expressed doubts if somebody might have abandoned her there.
The shocking incident of the girl going missing was reported from an isolated open area where nomadic people, who have migrated from other states, were staying together.
The incident happened after midnight and the missing girl was sleeping with her siblings and parents in an isolated place near the main road adjacent to the All Saints College here, they said.
Soon after the incident, the parents and the girl's siblings rushed to the nearby police station seeking help.
Police sources said that according to information provided by one of the girl's brothers, a person was moving around in a two-wheeler in a suspicious manner in the area during the time.
As television channels began airing the news, police teams rushed to the spot and carried out searches.
Earlier in the day, Thiruvananthapuram MLA Antony Raju said an alert had been sent to all police stations and an ADGP level officer was coordinating the investigation.
"The incident happened around midnight and the police are carrying out a comprehensive probe. Police stations in Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam districts and Kanyakumari in neighbouring Tamil Nadu have been alerted," he told the media.
The incident happened months after a five-year-old girl, daughter of a migrant couple, was abducted from her house and killed after being sexually assaulted in Aluva in Ernakulam district.
A migrant worker, convicted in the case, was given a death sentence by a special court in November.
According to police, the convict Ashwaq Alam from Bihar, had on July 28 lured the girl by promising sweets and subsequently brutally raped and killed her, before dumping the body in a garbage strewn marshy area behind a local market in nearby Aluva.