The Gamdevi police solved a kidnapping case within 16 hours after a 4-month-old girl was stolen from a cradle in the Haji Ali subway on Thursday afternoon. The 40-year-old female accused was caught at a railway station in the city from where she had planned to escape to Uttar Pradesh with the child. The woman told the police that she committed the crime out of despair, as she had been childless for the past several years.
Manisha Somnath Sanap (23), the mother of the child, works as a tamarind seller in the Haji Junction Subway . “She put the baby in a small hammock tied to two poles below the subway’s staircase where her mother looked after the child. Ms Sanap then left at around 10.30 am on Thursday. At around 12 pm, the accused Shabnam Abbas Shaikh stealthily picked up the baby when the mother was distracted, and exited the subway to catch a taxi,” said senior PI Pradip Lonandkar.
Ms Sanap returned to find her baby missing and after a few minutes of frantic search in the subway, went to the police station to file a complaint. “We immediately formed 7 teams and also accessed the CCTV footage in the subway where Shaikh was seen leaving with the child. A taxi driver then identified her and said he had dropped the woman at Byculla railway station,” added Mr Lonandkar.
Shaikh also had an argument with the driver over fare and pleaded with him to excuse her citing an immediate journey to Lucknow. “This is how we learnt where she was headed and deployed teams to all major railway stations. At around 4 am on Friday, a team at LTT spotted the woman roaming on the platform with the child and arrested her,” added another officer.