Tags:
Journalism of Courage
On Friday, the Vastrapur Police nabbed two youths — Manjesh Thakor (19) and Bharat Thakor (22) — accused of kidnapping a 14-year-old girl on December 11. It, however, turned out to be a false alarm. The girl had apparently gone out with the two on her accord.
According to the Vastrapur police, the girl is a resident of Premchandnagar and a student of class VIII at Himanshu Vidhyalaya. She was dropped at the school by her mother and brother on Thursday morning. She, however, skipped classes in order to go out with her ‘friends.’ Her mother would not have found anything amiss had a vegetable vendor, who sets up shop opposite the school gate, not informed her about the two men who had collected her daughter from the school gate. When she was confronted by her mother, she accepted having bunked classes.
The mother then lodged a complaint at the Vastrapur police station, who quickly arrested Manjesh and Bharat.
Manjesh told Newsline from the police station: “For the last one month, we have been watching this girl go to school every day. A few days ago, she asked us to bring a car so that we could go out on a drive. We met her outside the school on Thursday and together went to a hotel-cum-restaurant on the Sharkhej-Gandhinagar Highway for some snacks. Later, we also visited a few other places.”
Bharat also corroborated this. “We went for a drive on the Sharkhej-Gandhinagar Highway before dropping her off at school.”
Bharat works as a labourer in a factory and is a resident of Mahmudpura village, Ahmedabad while Manjesh is into farming. He is a resident of Thaltej village. The two have known each other since last Navratri when they met at the Vastrapura Lake.
