Two 17-year-old minors who had eloped from their houses on February 1 were successfully rescued by the Matunga police from Punjab.
The matter first surfaced when parents of the minor girl, who is currently at class 11, approached the police about their daughter being missing. Since the girl is underage, an offence of kidnapping was registered by the parents. Following preliminary investigation, girl’s friend, who goes to the same tuition as her, was found to be missing as well.
Police started tracing the girl’s location which showed her going towards Dadar station, and so did the boy, who hails from Dombivli. They were seen boarding a Delhi train from Dadar railway station, at the railway’s CCTV camera.
A team of police along with the father of the minors kept following their location whose first stop was in Delhi. After stopping at a couple pf stops, they moved towards Punjab’s Moga City.
“They kept turning their phones off and it was so frequent that their location was impossible to detect. Every time one of them turned on their phone, the location was different. More so, they changed their SIM but since their device was same, based on their IMEI number, we kept following them,” said an official part of the investigating team, adding that the chilly weather on north India made their investigation even harder.
The technical team who operated from Matunga police station was not efficient, claims girl’s father, who is an advocate by profession. Talking to FPJ, he said, “The locations kept changing and in order to obtain new locations, there was a whole lot of procedures involved which took a lot of time. By the time we managed to get it, their locations were changing again. Even though the officers involved did a commendable work, I feel the technicality part lagged behind.”
The minors had no plan whatsoever about what has to be done after reaching Punjab. According to the police, they had no place to stay, were roaming around ok the streets amid the horribly chilly weather.
Both were safely brought back to the police station and on Wednesday they were provided counselling that will continue for the next three days.
