Cops left playing nanny after truck drivers rescue toddler

KOLKATA: He was toddling along on the main road in Rajarhat, with trucks, buses and cars zooming past him on either side. Not yet three years old, he didn't even know the danger he was in, crying ceaselessly perhaps for his mother. Thankfully, some truck drivers took pity on him and handed him over to police.
Around 2.30 pm on Sunday, the boy, all of two and a half years old, was seen roaming aimlessly, close to the New Town police station at Rajarhat's Ramkrishnapalli.He was wearing a cream-coloured sleeveless tee-shirt and yellow shorts, and was unaccompanied.
Not one of the hundreds of vehicles that zoomed past him cared to stop and take him to safety. Finally, some truck drivers and a few local residents noticed the child veer dangerously towards the arterial road, and came to his aid. Fearing he could be run over any time, they took him to a local tea stall. After asking around for an hour, when nobody came forward to claim him, they took him to New Town police station and left him with the cops.
The police, however, were in a fix. They did not know what to do with the toddler, who was crying, perhaps out of hunger, and for whom there was no claimant. Officers, used to handling hardened criminals, were seen trying to calm the child with soothing terms of endearment, rushing here and there to fetch food, water and a bottle of milk.
"We don't know what to do with him," confessed New Town police outpost officer-in-charge Kausik Banerjee. "He cannot say anything."
There was a ray of hope when a woman entered the police station, saying her son was missing. However, it soon fizzled out when she said her son was 30 years old.
After waiting till night, when there was still no claimant, the cops handed the child over to Salt Lake's Sukanya Home, where there are facilities for looking after toddlers.