Mumbai auto driver, 2 wives among 4 held for kidnapping 2-month-old to sell him

MUMBAI: An autorickshaw driver and his two wives were arrested on Sunday for allege-dly kidnapping a two-month-old boy from a street in Goregaon. An agent, who had offered them Rs 5 lakh to facilitate the sale of the baby for adoption, has also been nabbed.
Police said they analysed details of 11,000 autorickshaws in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region and studied data of one lakh cellphone numbers to zero on to the accused.
The infant is the third child of a vendor couple from Gujarat, who travel between their hometown and Mumbai to sell bedsheets. Early on March 2, they missed their train to return to Gujarat and took shelter at a bus stop in Goregaon (E). Around 7.30am, they woke up and found the baby missing. They approached Vanrai police who registered an FIR.
CCTV footage showed that the baby was kidnapped at 4am. "The case was challenging as we had only two leads on the kidnapper — he was wearing a yellow jacket and was steering a new autorickshaw," said DCP Smita Patil.
Six police teams were formed. They obtained details of autorickshaws from Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai and narrowed down the list to relatively new vehicles plying in the western suburbs. The autorickshaw seen in the CCTV grabs had stickers on it and a peculiar hood. "We reached out to dealers to find out if anyone had sold such a vehicle," said a police officer.
After six days of inquiries, police tracked down the accused, Raju More (47) to a slum in Malwani. The baby was found in his house.
The infant was taken for a medical examination and later produced before the Child Welfare Committee.
More told police that his two wives were also involved in the crime — Fatima Shaikh (37) accompanied him for the kidnapping, while Mangal More (35) cared for the baby at home. Initially, More claimed that the motive was childlessness. But police discovered that an agent, Mohammad Asif Khan, 42, had offered Fatima Rs 5 lakh for the baby. Khan was unable to find adoptive parents to sell the baby by the time police reached More's doorstep. Sources said Khan was keen for a female baby and not male.
More, his two wives and Khan were taken into custody. The investigating team, comprising senior inspector Raju Mane, sub-inspectors Indrajit Bhise and Ajit Desai, and assistant inspector Pravin Tupare, are verifying if the accused have been involved in similar cases in the past.