Cuffe Parade on the hunt for a killer

It’s been three months since the three-and-a-half year old Karishma Chavan was abducted from a Cuffe parade slum, her flesh ripped off her arm, her skull smashed, her body abandoned near Veej Bhavan in the area. In November 2011, another three-year-old, Jagruti Patel was kidnapped, murdered and her body found at the same spot. A blood-stained boulder suggests what may have happened. But so far, neither has the motive for the kidnappings been established nor has the culprit been arrested. [caption id=“attachment_248336” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The residents are scared of sending their children out to play or study and at no point in the day do the children go out of the adults’ peripheral vision. Reuters”] [/caption] The motives forwarded range from sexual assault to human sacrifice to cure aids. Both were lured away by chocolate and little money by what seems like one person, who police say, “has a clean police record”, and, therefore hard to find. That has put parents and the community at large at high alerts. The DNA reports :

Over the past two months, parents in Ambedkar Nagar and the surrounding slum areas of Ganesh Murthy Nagar, Gita Nagar, Machhimar Nagar and Shiv Shakti Nagar, and their children, aren’t the same anymore. At any hour of the day, toddlers are barely out of their parents’ lap, and pre-teens never out of their range of vision. In the evenings, locals say these slum areas were filled with teenage boys setting up carrom boards and children crowding around them, playing and having an evening snack. Now, after dusk, the carrom boards and teenagers remain. But one can barely spot children in these lanes.

The residents are scared of sending their children out to play or study and at no point in the day do the children go out of the adults’ peripheral vision. The community has taken matters in its own hands and has organised into squads for round-the-clock surveillance to nab the suspect and secure their children. Even strangers are pitching in to take care of the community’s children. Mothers who work as nannies and domestic helps in posh residences close-by, are leaving work to be with their children. On 16 March, the Cuffe Parade police arrested a 32-year-old man who was allegedly trying to abduct a minor in Shiv Shakti slum, Cuffe Parade and beaten up after the residents suspected he was behind the murders of the two girls. Some reports say another abduction attempt of luring two girls with nail polish were foiled by an alert mother.