Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore   

'Runaway' children return from Kerala

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE Aug. 25. The seven children, who went missing here on Wednesday and were later traced in a village in Kerala, returned to the city on Monday afternoon.

Sudha, her brother, Kumar, and Radha, Rekha, Soumya and Dhanalakshmi were escorted back to Bangalore by a team of city police officials. They were presented before the media.

The Deputy Commissioner of Police (East), Jayaprakash Nayak, told presspersons that the children had not been kidnapped and they left their homes themselves.

He said it was a simple case of joyride but to the wrong destination. The children, he said, wanted to visit the Kalki Temple in Chennai. Since their parents had not agreed to take them to the temple, they decided to go there themselves.

Unfortunately for the children, they boarded the wrong train and arrived in Kanyakumari instead of Chennai.

In Kanyakumari, the police gave them shelter. A woman, whom they befriended, helped them board a train to Mavelikkara in Haripad of Alappuzha district in Kerala.

Sudha said it was on Wednesday last that she and the others decided to visit the temple. The children packed their schoolbags with clothes instead of books and walked up to the bus stand near Lido Cinema in Ulsoor to board a bus to the railway station. They met Yelappa, an acquaintance, on the way. Mr. Yelappa asked them to hurry up as they were late for school. He was surprised when the children said they were not going to school and they were planning to visit the temple.

The children boarded a bus to Majestic and when they were told that the train to Chennai would leave only at 9 p.m., they camped at the railway station. They bought tickets for a journey Chennai, but boarded the train to Kanyakumari by mistake.

The children did not know they had boarded the wrong train as they did not speak to anyone. Besides, they claimed that their tickets were not checked by the travelling ticket examiner.

When the train arrived at Kanyakumari, the children were spotted by the Railway police. The police provided them shelter for the night.

During their stay on the railway platform, the children befriended Razia. She purchased two full tickets and two half tickets and made the children board a train to Alappuzha.

The children alighted at Mavelikkara. The grandparents of Sudha and Kumar livethere and the children went to their house.

The couple called up their daughter in the city, and informed her about the arrival of the children.

This information was later passed on to the police.

Asked about the whereabouts of Razia, Mr. Nayak said all aspects of the case were yet to be looked into.

`God was with us'

``We were not scared of running away from our homes as we were sure God was with us. All we wanted to do was to visit the Kalki Temple and pray for our well-being," Sudha, one of the seven children who went missing in Bangalore last week, said. Sudha was a picture of confidence when she spoke to the media here on Monday. She answered all questions calmly and did not falter even once. While the other children stood around, Sudha turned out to be the spokesperson for her friends. She claimed Kalki had helped her perform better in her examinations.

'' I won several prizes and did well academically. Since I wanted to do better, I decided to go to the Kalki Temple and offer prayers,'' she said.

The children said they had been planning a trip to the Kalki Temple in Chennai three to four days before they took a train to Kanyakumari. They were all devotees of Kalki and they decided to run away when their parents refused to take them to Chennai.

With just Rs. 250, the pocket money given by their parents, with them, the children embarked on their journey. It was only when they reached Kanyakumari that they realised that they had ended up in the wrong place. The children claimed that they had tried calling their parents in Bangalore from Kanyakumari but they could not get through as the lines were busy.

The children are neighbours staying at Dopanahalli in Indiranagar Police Station limits.

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