Thane: A Class 9 student who had gone missing from the city in 2015 had been traced to neighbouring Navi Mumbai nearly four years later, police said on Wednesday. Police had registered a case of kidnapping after the boy went missing from Thane’s Vasant Vihar locality in March 2015. Deputy Commissioner of Police Deepak Deoraj said it was a bank account which helped the police track down the boy. After he went missing, his father had received a call on April 1, 2015, seeking a ransom of `1 lakh for his release.
Police arrested three persons including a juvenile in the case for allegedly making the call, but the boy could not be found. The boy’s parents had also filed a habeas corpus petition in the high court, seeking a CBI probe. The high court was monitoring the probe, the DCP said. The police, during the investigation, questioned more than 250 persons and examined CCTV footage from hundreds of places and checked call records, the officer said.
A team led by senior inspector Ravindra Daundkar got a tip-off that an account in the boy’s name had been opened at a nationalised bank at Nerul on January 22, 2019. Taking help of the bank officials, the police traced the boy and reunited him with his parents. The boy told police he fled his house as he feared he was going to fail in Class 9 and would face rebuke from the parents. He lived with a friend and worked with a caterer, the boy told police.
