LAHORE: The minor boy kidnapped three days ago from a street of Ghaziabad was sold for Rs20,000 to a woman in Sheikhupura.

The mother of seven daughters had asked her brother-in-law to kidnap a minor boy from Lahore and hand it over to her.

The Crime Investigation Agency (CIA) police traced the suspects with the help of CCTV cameras of the Safe City Authority and recovered four-year-old Umair from Sheikhupura.

A police official told Dawn that the Punjab Safe Cities Authority helped police detect the registration number of the motorcycle which prime suspect Amir used to transport Umair to Sheikhupura. He committed the crime with the help of his accomplice Usman.

The CCTVs detected various locations of the kidnappers when they were taking the boy to Sheikhupura through Shahdara, said the official.

He said Amir and his accomplice had kidnapped Umair on Sept 9 when he, along with his brother, was playing in the street at Chaudhry Colony in Ghaziabad area.

The footage of the incident went viral on social media. One of the suspects could be seen talking to the kids in the street. Moments later, they took away Umair by the bike.

The parents of the boy came to know about it when Umair didn’t return home after a few hours.

The official said prime suspect Amir told police that he committed the offence just to fulfill the desire of his sister-in-law. The boy has been handed over to Amir Latif, his father who works in a factory.

Published in Dawn, September 13th, 2019