Girl goes to meet FB pal in Beed, boy held for kidnapping

A social networking site took a 17-year-old girl from Goregaon to Marathwada’s Beed district to meet a boy of the same age whom she had befriended on the same site.

Three weeks after the girl slipped out of her Goregaon home without informing her parents to visit Beed, the boy has been arrested on the charge of kidnapping and sent to a remand home.

The girl, a school dropout who had gone missing on June 2, was brought back to Mumbai by the police on Friday.

She visited the boy’s house after he shared his phone number and home address through Facebook — the networking site through which they had established contact about a month ago.

The girl, said a police officer, stayed with the minor boy for about a fortnight at his uncle’s home. “When the boy learnt that the girl had left home without informing her family, he got worried. That’s when he and his uncle took her to a local police station,” said a police officer.

When the girl told the police in Beed that she was from Mumbai, they touched base with officials at Vanrai police station.

In the meantime, officials of Vanrai police station in Goregaon, where the girl’s family had lodged a missing person’s complaint, the police had tracked down the girl’s whereabouts through her cell phone location.

“We left for Beed two days ago. We got both the minors to Mumbai on Friday,” said the police officer.

While a case of kidnapping has been registered against the boy, the police are inquiring if the girl had been harassed or sexually assaulted. “We’re awaiting reports of their medical examination,” said senior inspector Motiram Kadam.