Andhra Pradesh: Infant’s kidnapping case cracked within 24 hours

CCTVs played a crucial role in solving the case, says Police Commissioner

Cracking a sensational kidnapping case of a four-day-old baby girl from King George Hospital (KGH) in less than 24 hours, the City Police arrested five persons, including four women, for their involvement on Thursday. The baby was safely reunited with her parents at the hospital.

The arrested persons were identified as Yashoda, Gayatri, Geeta, Madina Lakshmi, and her husband Madina Rajesh.

Addressing a press conference on Thursday, Commissioner of Police Manish Kumar Sinha said that Lakshmi and Rajesh, hailing from Srikakulam district, were childless. The couple, who wanted to have a child at any cost, were approached by Gayatri, Yashoda and Geeta, who said they would procure an infant and hand it over to the couple for a hefty sum of money.

Yashoda and Gayatri decided to kidnap an infant from KGH and hand it over to Lakshmi and Rajesh. After going around the maternity ward at KGH, the women found that M. Appayamma (21), a resident of Padmanabham, had given birth to a girl on March 13.

Masquerading as nurses, Yashoda and Gayatri took the baby from her mother on the pretext of administering a vaccine. They then fled the hospital with the infant.

The Commissioner said that CCTV cameras played a key role in cracking the case. “We first checked the CCTV footage of a camera installed near the gynaecology ward where we saw a woman leaving in a hurry with a baby in her arms. The same woman was spotted in other cameras at an earlier time moving around suspiciously near the ward,” Mr. Sinha said.

After the police team inquired with the auto-rickshaw drivers outside the hospital, they came to know that one of the drivers had dropped these women near Gurudwara Junction.