PANAJI
Top police officials were relieved over the baby kidnapping case being cracked in an operation which lasted under twenty-four hours and involved almost every police station in the North Goa jurisdiction besides the Crime Branch.
The investigation and the police manhunt was heavily dependent on crucial CCTV footage from Karaswada in Mapusa where the woman was seen and matched earlier footage of her riding pillion with the baby in her arms somewhere on the Panaji-Mapusa route.
Some footage had been made public by the police on Friday evening.
"Human intelligence inputs and technical surveillance were analysed to track the lady's movements and the search widened by constituting 12 teams working round the clock under Police Inspectors with three SDPOs supervising," said North Goa SP Shobit Saxena, IPS.
Saxena added that a manhunt was launched across Bicholim-Valpoi region and the teams converged at Saleli in Valpoi and identified the suspect with the infant child matching the description.
The child was identified by the mother and the suspect, identified as Vishranti Gawas, has confessed that she had wanted to raise the child as her own and had therefore kidnapped the child, Saxena said.
Gawas is a housewife and lives in Saleli with her husband and four daughters, Saxena said.
The operation was supervised by Saxena himself and the teams were led by the SDPOs Sandesh
Chodankar ( Bicholim), Santosh Dessai (Panaji), Gajanand Prabhudessai (Mapusa) and Sunita Sawant (DySP Crime Branch)
The 12 teams were headed by PIs Vijay Rane, Sudesh Naik, Krishna Sinari, Ninad Deulkar, Tushar Lotlikar, Jivba Dalvi, Mahesh Gadekar, Sagar Ekoskar, Laxi Amonkar, Rahul Parab, Satish Gaude and Narayan Chimulkar.
