KOZHIKODE: Police found all the six girls who had escaped from the children's home for girls at Vellimadukunnu on Wednesday. While one was taken into custody by the police after being alerted by Keralites at Madiwala in Bengaluru on Thursday, another was traced by a team from a bus headed to Kozhikode at Mandya at 2am on Friday.
The remaining girls were taken into custody from Edakkara in Malappuram on Friday after they returned to state from Bengaluru by train and were brought to Kozhikode. The police team and the two girls taken into custody in Karnataka are expected to arrive late on Friday night. Police said the girls said that they were fed up with their life at children's home and had escaped to go to Bengaluru and Goa.
Medical College ACP K Sudarsan said police got information that four girls had boarded Kanyakumari-bound Island Express from Bengaluru on Thursday evening and had enhanced surveillance at railway stations. CCTV visuals at Palakkad station showed that the girls had got down at the station. "One of them called a male friend based in Edakkara; they took a bus from Palakkad and reached Edakkara and were caught by the police," he said.
According to the police, the girls used a ladder on Wednesday afternoon to flee the children's home. As they only had Rs 48 with them, they borrowed around Rs 100 from people to reach KSRTC bus stand and from there they borrowed another Rs 500 from a guest worker from West Bengal. That money was returned by a male friend of one of the girls on Google Pay.
They boarded a bus to Palakkad and on finding that they were short of money to pay the fare; they borrowed Rs 2000 from a co-passenger which was again repaid by their friend on Google Pay. Police said the girls took a train from Palakkad to Bengaluru but were caught by TTE for ticketless travel and left at Erode. From there they took another train to Bengaluru.
Police said that youths from Kerala on seeing them in Bengaluru followed them and took them to a hotel but people got suspicious and alerted the local police. However, before the police arrived, the five girls escaped and people detained one girl and the youths and handed them over to Madiwala police.
All the six girls hailed from Kozhikode itself. While four girls were aged 16, one girl was 14 and the other 17 years of age.
Meanwhile, the police and child rights commission are looking into the alleged security lapses at children's home including the absence of CCTV cameras.
