GURGAON: The road to justice can be a long one. This search traversed nearly 500 villages in Haryana and UP. The search lasted five months and burned more than 10,000 kilometers of fuel.This was a search for Anil, a man accused of kidnapping a teenager, making him work as a forced laborer and torturing him. It began last July after the boy – frail and mutilated – was found by locals in the Badoli village of Palwal.The 15-year-old is missing his left arm. He was dropped off in the middle of nowhere and told to leave. Anil, a dairy and water were all he could remember of his captor. He had another information that Anil had two daughters, Riya and Siya.Locals alerted the police and a PCR van took him to hospital in Nuh. As he was being prepared for surgery, he escaped barefoot and without clothes. In acute pain, the boy climbed into a hilly area, reached Tauru in Nuh and took shelter at an abandoned bus stop late at night. He walked back towards the town of Nuh, where a teacher found him, took him to a local health center and informed the police. His family in Kishanganj in Bihar has been contacted.It took a while for the boy to overcome his trauma and reveal his suffering. “The victim was so traumatized that she initially did not reveal what had happened to him to the Palwal or Nuh police,” said a Govt Railway Police (GRP) source. “It was only after a local newspaper in Rohtak published a report on his plight that we in Bahadurgarh were alerted.”GRP filed a complaint under Sections 75, 79 of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 and under BNS Sections 118(2) (voluntarily causing grievous hurt with dangerous weapons or means), 125 (carelessness or negligence endangering human life or personal safety), 127(4) (wrongful confinement for ten days or more), 137 (kidnapping) and 146 a (unlawful forced labour), 289 (negligent conduct in relation to machinery) and 3(5) (act by several persons) for the boy’s disappearance from Bahadurgarh railway station in Jhajjar on May 27.He had gotten out to find water, walked too far and missed his train, the Farakka Express, on which he was traveling with his father and brother from Jind to his hometown.When the GRP unit learned the details, they were shocked. They learned that the boy’s left arm was mangled in a food cutter and the severed limb was thrown into a body of water. Shortly after the accident, the bleeding minor was driven along highways for hours and then had to fend for himself in Haryana. The kidnapper had not taken him to the hospital but left him there with only Rs 7,500 in cash.The boy left his home in Kishanganj to work in Kangra in Himachal Pradesh. But when he wanted to come back, his father Rishidev and brother Kailash went to Kangra to bring him back. They were on their way to Kishanganj in the Farakka Express when the boy separated from them while getting down at Bahadurgarh.On July 29, Rishidev received a call from Nuh police informing him that his son had been admitted to PGI Rohtak the next day. “We were devastated to see him in such a pathetic condition. He told me that his employer and family did not give him proper food and did not allow him to wear slippers,” Rishidev said in his police statement.By November, the boy had undergone three surgeries. But the search for Anil yielded no results. The family lost hope and took him back to Kishanganj.However, the GRP unit did not give up. They had decided to do everything they could to bring justice to a boy that no one really cared about.While he was recovering, GRP officials had started approaching the sarpanches – dairy owner Anil and two daughters Riya and Siya – with the leads they had. They started with the Haryana districts and mapped possible areas based on his description of a body of water. Initially, the search focused on villages near storm drains. In parallel, GRP approached Haryana Education Department, CBSE and other state authorities to scan the enrollment documents for Anil with daughters Riya and Siya. This digital search focused on 20 potential matches. Police officers visited each and every one of them, but none of them owned a dairy.A breakthrough finally came during one of the searches in November, an officer recalled, when the boy accompanied a NVC team in Delhi and pointed to silt along the banks of the Yamuna. “He said Anil’s farm had the same soil,” the official said. The GRP teams now knew that they had to search along the Yamuna.GRP teams started searching villages along Yamuna in Haryana, Delhi and UP for Anil. Officials said they often exceeded authorized fuel expenses, so investigators paid out of pocket to continue the search. On December 30, the GRP finally found the wanted Anil, a 28-year-old dairy owner in Motipur village in Greater Noida.Led by SP Nitika Gahlaut and Inspector Satya Prakash, GRP teams from Ambala, Rohtak, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Panipat and Sonipat were involved in the pursuit on Anil. They assumed that Anil had thrown the boy’s arm into the river and driven him to Palwal, 100 km away.Anil told police he “got scared” after the accident. “The accused had gone to a colony near Bahadurgarh railway station when he saw the crying boy and decided to take him to work,” said a source.For the police, the main thing was to hold on to hope. “We wanted to seek justice for a child who lost his arm and was left in pain on the street. Although the family lost hope, our SP Nitika Gahlaut encouraged us to nab the accused even when all resources were exhausted,” said Satya Prakash, who led the trail despite being transferred to Ambala.
