Missing Assam girl found in Meerut

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One among thousands of girls missing from Assam, police were under pressure from Gauhati High Court to deliver. Having missed their first deadline last June, they had until May 23 to track her down before suffering the ignominy of having the investigation taken away from them.

A class V dropout, the girl fled from her home in Pub-Bandarmela village in the early hours of August 25, 2014, to join her boyfriend, a labourer, in Mumbai. She allegedly told police that his friend accompanied her and sat her in a train in Guwahati destined for Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, Mumbai. But she never made it there. She claimed to police that on the way, she met a woman, whose name she can’t remember, who promised to find her work.

“The woman deliberately misplaced her ticket and forced her to alight. They then got into another train and reached Jammu and Kashmir,” said Samir Mojumdar, confidential assistant to Hojai Superintendent of Police K J Saikia.

“Work” turned out to be cleaning the woman’s home for a fortnight. The Assam Police say the girl was sold to an indisposed elderly woman for Rs 50,000. “The old woman and her son harassed her and did not allow her to use a phone,” Mojumdar added. After ten months in captivity, she was offered a way out by a doctor who routinely visited her employer. The doctor, whose identity police have not disclosed, proposed to help her after becoming friendly with her.

She could not remember her mother’s cell phone number and remained with the doctor’s family, playing with and caring for her young children, even as the family visited Mumbai twice and settled in Meerut, where the doctor owns a home.

“She had become part of the family,” Mojumdar added. Half of the family was determined that she stay with them, but the doctor’s niece, the same age as her, decided she must go home.

“The niece made her recall one digit every day of her mother’s phone number. It was not easy. She had forgotten the number and couldn’t speak Assamese anymore. But somehow, she managed to remember the number,” said Mojumdar.

The police probe, which had taken a backseat owing to assembly elections, was back on its feet when they listened in to a phone call made at 8.40 pm Thursday. There had been a hitch when she spoke in Hindi. “I am… your daughter,” she said. It wasn’t until the doctor’s niece sent a picture of the girl that the mother was convinced.

The police work ends after escorting her home and conducting a medical examination on her. The Child Welfare Commission will then hand her over to her legal guardian.

SP Saikia said, “The important thing is that the girl has been found. Once she is back, we will speak to her in detail and make arrests accordingly.” But it took a fifth officer in two years to lead the investigation team before they even reached this stage, apart from three visits to Mumbai, and trips to Hyderabad, Manipur, Nagaland, New Delhi and Bangladesh.

The initial fears were that she had been sold into prostitution and the probe team accordingly trawled through red-light areas in Mumbai. Sub inspector Terang, asked to step in two months ago replacing an officer on the verge of retirement, made New Delhi the center of his probe.

“For her to have gone to Mumbai, she had to have passed through New Delhi, so I decided to concentrate there,” he said.

Terang, who joined the police force only seven years ago, admitted he had been ordered to make the case a priority. “Shayad mere hi haath likha gaya tha yeh recovery (Maybe I was destined to recover the girl).”

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