Gurugram cops rescue 5-yr-old abducted boy, three arrested in connection

A five-year-old boy who was kidnapped by a trafficking gang was rescued by Gurugram police, early on Wednesday. During the rescue, police also arrested three suspects from a house in Sector 52, police said. The boy had been abducted around eight to ten hours earlier from Behrampur village, near Sector 59, while playing outside his home on Tuesday evening, according to police. 

The child’s parents, unable to locate him, immediately reported the kidnapping to the Sector 65 police station. Investigators said that the suspects were planning to traffic the boy to Bihar, where he would be handed over to an interstate gang that forces children into begging.  

Police said they managed to trace and apprehend the suspects—Varsha Sahni, 27, of Madhubani, Asha alias Sapna, 23, and her husband Mukul Kumar, 27, from Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh—before they could flee to Bihar with the child. The boy was safely recovered from a rented house in Sector 52, where the trio had been hiding him, officers added. 

Sandeep Kumar, public relations officer of Gurugram police, confirmed the arrests and rescue. He said, “Varsha and Asha were roaming around looking for a target when they saw the boy playing unattended. Seizing the opportunity, they kidnapped him, took him to Asha’s residence, changed his clothes, and hid him in a room. They planned to transport him to Bihar before they were caught.” 

The child was reported to be handed over to suspects in Bihar who run a gang that exploits children by forcing them to beg. According to police, Varsha was previously employed as a housekeeping worker but was currently unemployed, relying on money sent by her husband from Goa. The other two suspects, Asha and Mukul, were daily-wage labourers. 

The suspects were placed under a one-day police remand for further interrogation, investigators said. Police are now probing how much money the trio stood to make from the trafficking and whether they had been involved in similar crimes before. Efforts are also underway to trace other members of the trafficking network, they added. 

Based on a complaint from the boy’s parents, an FIR was lodged against the suspects under sections 3(5) (common intention), 139(1) (kidnapping a child for the purpose of begging), and 142 (wrongfully concealing or confining a kidnapped person) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita at Sector-65 police station on Tuesday night.