Girl fakes kidnap in bid to change schools

MUMBAI: A 12-year-old Std VI student from Kurla (W) reportedly staged her own kidnap on Friday when her parents turned down her request to get her enrolled in another school. The minor girl, who hails from a middle class family, was annoyed with her classmates who teased her about a boy and so wanted to discontinue further studies at the school, said the Kurla police.
DCP (Zone V) Dhananjay Kulkarni said the girl, student of an English medium school, planned to stage the kidnap drama when her parents took her request for change of school lightly instead of trying to know the problem she was facing. “The girl took the extreme step to scare her parents. She did it so that her act will make her parents fulfill her wish of changing the school,” Kulkarni told TOI.
Early on Friday, the girl left her Kurla home on the pretext of going to school. “She didn’t attend school. Instead, she went to Kurla railway station, took a train and reached Panvel around 7.10am. She went to a relative’s house there and informed them that she had been kidnapped by four unidentified men in a Maruti van from Kurla while she was on her way to school and that she had somehow managed to escape,” said Kulkarni.
Wasting no time, the girl’s relatives took her to the Panvel police station and lodged a case of kidnapping. The police informed the Kurla police about the incident and transferred the case for further probe. “The girl repeatedly the girl narrated the incident without any discrepancies and remained firm in her statement,” said a Kurla police officer.
When the police checked her school bag, they found the train ticket which she had bought around 5.45am from Kurla station. “Finally, the girl confessed that she was fed up with her classmates and planned the abduction. She was handed to the safe custody of her parents at noon. We counselled the girl and her parents so that in future she should not take any extreme step that will lead to a serious problem,” said the officer.