The Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Government Railway Police (GRP) have reunited five children and a senior citizen with their families in three separate cases across the city over the past two days.
On July 21, at 1.20 p.m., the Boisar RPF spotted four children looking lost. Officials approached the children on noticing that they were not accompanied by their parents, said senior police inspector Uttam Sonawane from Palghar railway police station.
The children, Amarjeet Giri (13), Ranjeet Giri (12), Vivek Patel (12) and Dinesh Prajapati (11), were residents of Gujarat. “After talking to the children, we got to know that two of them were from Bhilad in Gujarat and the other two were from Dadra Nagar Haveli. We contacted the Bhilad and Dadra Nagar Haveli police stations and informed them about the children. The police went to their homes and found that their parents were looking for them,” Mr. Sonawane said.
According to the police, parents of the four children were labourers at a construction site near Bhilad railway station. Mr. Sonawane said the children boarded a random train seeking adventure and ended up at Boisar railway station. After their parents confirmed the children’s identity, they were escorted to Bhilad station where they were reunited with their parents, he said.
On the same day, a boy aged nine was found roaming around alone by the RPF at Dombivli railway station at 9 a.m. Officials from the Dombivli RPF said the boy, Akshay Rathod, was a resident of Manpada, Dombivli. RPF officials contacted the Manpada police station and found that a missing person complaint was filed by the boy’s grandfather. They soon reunited the boy with his grandparents. Ashok Rathod (50), the boy's grandfather, told the police that the boy had left home early that morning. When he did not return home, they approached the police.
On July 22, Andheri RPF officials reunited a 75-year-old woman who had lost her way and had come to the police station. RPF officials spotted the woman walking on platform no. 8 at 3.40 p.m. “When we spoke with her, she said she had lost her way and gave her address,” an RPF official said. The officials contacted her daughter and informed her about the incident. The woman, Selma Nair, was reunited with her daughter Satya Shetty (28), a resident of Shamnagar slum, Andheri (East).