Alert citizen helps nab 6-year-old’s abductor
A 30-year-old man was arrested for allegedly abducting a six-year-old girl from outside her home in Colaba on Thursday.
According to the Colaba police, the accused took away the girl by luring her with chocolate, but before he could do any harm to her, an alert citizen caught hold of him with the help of other locals.
The police is investigating if the accused is the same person, who was involved in the three undetected cases, which took place in Colaba and Cuffe Parade in 2011 and 2012, where young girls were kidnapped, raped and murdered. The accused’s DNA samples have been sent for tests and the report is awaited.
The arrested accused has been identified as Baliram Maruti Umapeth (30), who resides in room number 15 of Shanidev Building, Colaba Market. Umapeth does odd jobs for a living.
According to the police, on Thursday, victim Chaitali Dasare (name changed), who lives with her parents in the same locality, was playing outside her house in the morning. “Umapeth approached her and clicked her photographs on his cellphone. Later, he told her that if she came along with him, he would give her chocolates. Umapeth took the victim to a dilapidated building, which is part of a BMC chawl,” said an officer.
The complainant Sandeep Pardeshi’s mother lived in a room on the second floor of the same building. At around 11.30 am, when Pardeshi was coming down from the second floor, after leaving his daughter with his mother, he saw someone moving suspiciously on the first floor. The area was dark as all the rooms on the floor were vacant and locked from the outside.
Pardeshi approached the man, who later identified himself as Umapeth, and questioned him as to why he had come there with the young girl. Umapeth told him that he was just moving around with the girl. Pardeshi suspected something amiss; he cross-questioned him and Umapeth panicked and ran away from there. Pardeshi, however, shouted and alerted people standing downstairs, who then caught hold of Umapeth.
Rameshwar Supale, senior PI, Colaba police station, confirmed that he was arrested.
Another officer, on condition of anonymity, said that Umapeth’s DNA sample has been sent for a test to check whether he was involved in any of the previous three cases. “Since, Umapeth used to work as a cleaner in the same area of Cuffe Parade, where the two cases of rape and murder were reported, we don’t want to take any chances,” the officer said.
Post new comment