Friday, 18 November 2022 | PNS | HARIDWAR
The Haridwar police investigating a complaint regarding a man sexually assaulting a minor have arrested a man who had allegedly stolen two children and sold them in Dehradun and Badaun in Uttar Pradesh. The Laksar police and Anti Human Trafficking Unit have recovered both the children and are now working to trace their parents. The police have said that cunning persons like Qadri take advantage of people across the nation who wish to adopt children but do not ascertain all information about the child before adoption.
The Haridwar senior superintendent of police Ajai Singh informed that in August, a Laksar resident had lodged a police complaint about a man duping his minor daughter and sexually assaulting her in a hotel after making her drink a spiked cold drink. Investigating the case, the police faced the challenges posed by the accused being unknown and lack of information about him due to lack of any communication between him and the victim. Consistent efforts of the police led them to Mohammed Mustaq Qadri from Badaun as a suspect. On a tip off from informants, Qadri was caught at the Laksar railway station on Wednesday. During questioning and search, documents recovered from the accused made the police suspect that he was deeply involved in human trafficking.
During interrogation, Qadri revealed he had forged documents of a child helpline and a Delhi based orphanage to dupe the public. He had taken a room on rent in the SIIDCUL area in Haridwar and used to pose as a railway child helpline officer in the locality. According to the police, the accused said that he used to target children looking lost at bus depots and various railway stations and used to kidnap them on finding an opportunity. He further said that he had kidnapped a child aged about one year from Delhi bus depot and another child from Ghaziabad. He sold one of the children in Ghaziabad and another in Dehradun. According to the police, Qadri is a cunning person who has taken lakhs of rupees from other people in the name of getting them a child to adopt. Apart from the child kidnappings, a separate case has been registered against him in the earlier case regarding sexual assault on a minor. Strict action is also being taken against the owner of the lodge where Qadri had taken the minor because the hotel owner did not seek the ID of the girl. The police are not ruling out the possibility of the accused having kidnapped more children in other parts of India in the past.
