Kolkata, April 11 – Four ninth-grade girls who mysteriously disappeared from a school were rescued within 12 hours by officers from the Amherst Street police station in Kolkata, according to a senior Kolkata Police officer on Saturday.
The incident occurred on Wednesday at 2 p.m. at the century-old Arya Kanya School in north Kolkata.
The incident began on April 8. The four girls went to school as usual. However, after school ended, they did not return home. Their parents, concerned, rushed to the local Amherst Street police station and filed a kidnapping report. Based on their complaint, a team from the Amherst Street police station, led by Officer-in-Charge Shubhdeep Chakraborty, immediately began an investigation.
A police officer said that the Kolkata Police team started examining the CCTV footage of the Howrah and Sealdah stations in the afternoon. The photographs of the four missing girls were shown to the Government Railway Police, the Railway Protection Force, and vendors at the station.
Through sources, the police learned that the four girls had changed into their school uniforms in the toilet of the Old Complex of Howrah Station and boarded a long-distance train. Incidentally, trains to Mumbai and Asansol were departing from Howrah at that time.
During the initial investigation, the investigation team, after questioning the classmates of the four missing girls, learned that the four girls had recently been scolded for going to a hookah bar in Kolkata without informing their parents.
In addition, a friend of a schoolgirl told the police that one of the four girls had met an 18-year-old boy from Asansol through Instagram. The four girls had also met him a few days earlier when the boy came to Kolkata for a business purpose.
On Wednesday night, a team of police from the Amherst Street police station left for Asansol. Upon arriving there, the Kolkata Police learned from the local police station that a young man and a minor girl had been injured in a motorcycle accident during a routine check at around 11:30 p.m. The police found the young man in the hospital after searching for him. After questioning him, the Kolkata Police learned about the presence of the four girls in Asansol.
The girls went to several hotels in Asansol to spend the night on Wednesday. However, no one agreed to pay the hotel rent for the four minors. The Kolkata Police rescued the four girls unharmed from Asansol station at around 2:30 a.m. on Thursday. They were brought to Kolkata on Thursday afternoon. It is learned that they are currently being kept in a care facility.
"The investigation is ongoing to determine why the girls went to Asansol and who took them there. Efforts are being made to understand the motive behind the girls leaving school and not informing their parents, and ending up in Asansol. We are trying to solve the mystery of their disappearance," said the senior officer of Kolkata Police.