Thane: Two minor sisters from Uttar Pradesh, one of them mentally challenged, were reunited with their parents after they inadvertently came to Maharashtra by boarding a wrong train, police said.
The two girls, one aged 17 who, according to police, is mentally unstable and the other around 4 years old, are residents of Ghazipur district in UP. They had last month gone to their aunt’s house in the neighbouring Chandauli district, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Deepak Deoraj told reporters here on Monday.
However, while returning home, the girls, instead of boarding a train to Ghazipur, wrongly got into another train headed to Mumbai, he said. The girls, who spoke in Bhojpuri language, were found sitting on a platform of the Thane railway station on January 15, but they were unable to tell the police their address or home town, he said.
The police took custody of the girls and presented them before a local court which ordered that the elder sibling be admitted to Thane Mental Hospital for treatment and the younger one be lodged at an orphanage in Dombivali town, Deoraj said. The court also asked the Thane police to search for their parents.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Rajendra Tambe personally helped the girls by arranging clothes and other essential items for them, the official said. The anti-human trafficking cell of Thane police took assistance of a woman well-versed in Bhojpuri language to interact with the elder sibling at the hospital. After some interactions, the police came to know that the two girls were residents of Dildarnagar area in Ghazipur, the official said.
The police then posted information about the girls on several WhatsApp groups and one such message was seen by the siblings’ parents, who immediately contacted the Dildarnagar police station in Ghazipur, he said. The parents later got in touch with the Thane police who helped them in identifying the siblings, Deoraj said. Subsequently, the parents came to Thane where the police handed over the girls to them on Monday, he added.
