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`Missing' students traced near Haripad

By Our Staff Reporter

ALAPPUZHA AUG. 23. Seven children who were reported missing from Bangalore since August 20 were traced at Kumarapuram, near Haripad in the district, this morning.

They were found at the ancestral home of two of the children at Erikkavu in Kumarapuram panchayat.

The children, who are students of the 515-Army Base Workshop High School, Althoor, have been identified as Anurekha (14), Rekha (11), Laxmi (13), Saumya (8), Radha (13), Sunil Rajan (10) and Sudha Rajan (13). Five of them are natives of Bangalore while Sunil and Sudha are the children of Rajan and Mini, natives of Erikkavu, who are now settled in Bangalore.

According to the students, they reached here after escaping from the clutches of a three-member gang, which had "abducted them from near their school in Bangalore on August 20 morning".

"The gang-members wore masks and came in a white Maruti Omni," they said. They said they were taken to Thiruvananthapuram and then to Kanyakumari, where they were "forced to go around begging for two days. They said that they were kept in the waiting room at the Kanyakumari railway station from where they escaped. "After our escape, we came across an aunty from Thrissur who helped us board a train to Mavelikara," they said. From there, they had reached Haripad by an autorickshaw, the children said.

The Haripad assistant sub-inspector, Gopalakrishnan, who questioned the students, said that their version did not seem convincing. He said the children would be handed over to their relatives from Bangalore who would arrive here along with the Bangalore police.

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