MARGAO
The mother of the abandoned three-year-old girl found in Margao’s Gandhi market has been traced, but in a new twist, it has come to light that another woman is responsible for abandoning not just the three-year-old girl but her one-and-a-half-year-old brother outside the Margao railway station.
The Goa police have now launched a hunt to trace the woman who had abandoned the three-year-old girl child and a boy aged one and a half years on the Aquem side of the Margao railway station. Children’s rights activist Auda Viegas has said that while the three-year-old girl was found abandoned at the Gandhi market, her one-and-a-half-year-old younger brother was abandoned on the Aquem side of the Margao railway station. Both the boy and the girl are presently housed at Apna Ghar.
The police achieved a breakthrough in the child abandonment case on Tuesday when a team of the Konkan Railway police during routine patrolling at the Margao railway station spotted a woman in distress at the station. Upon preliminary inquiry, the policemen on patrol found some injury on the woman’s eye and called Auda Viegas at the Konkan railway police station for the recording of her statement.
It was during the process of recording her statement that the woman explained how she has landed at the Margao railway station and is on the lookout for her two minor children, one a three-year girl and a one-and-a-half-year-old son.
During interrogation, it has come to light that the woman’s husband, a native of Bihar, has married twice, once to the first wife in Madhya Pradesh and the present wife in Maharashtra. The husband has a total of four children, two of the first wife and the other two of the second wife, who was found at the Margao railway station.
Police said the husband, who was working at a sugar factory in Maharashtra along with the four children, both the wives, and the first wife’s male friend, had moved into Goa recently and were staying somewhere near the railway station in North Goa. Auda said the Goa police had found out from CCTV footage that the husband along with the two wives and children were at the railway station.
“Based on the CCTV footage and investigations, the police have launched a hunt to trace the husband and his first wife,” Auda said.
Process underway for custody claim
MARGAO: The mother has no documents to prove that the girl and boy are her children at the moment. But, the police have launched an exercise with the help of their counterparts in Maharashtra to obtain the documents from the hospital where she had delivered her children. “Based on the documents, the mother will be taken to the children,” Auda said. Presently, the distressed mother has been put up by Auda at the One Stop centre run by her NGO.
