Five-year-old boy abducted from Thane district rescued in 5 hours; accused held

THANE: (May 16) In a swift operation, the police have rescued a five-year-old boy abducted from Maharashtra’s Thane district and arrested the accused within five hours of the crime, an official said on Saturday.

The accused, Iqbal Guddu Ansari (34), a textile worker from Bhiwandi, was cornered and arrested from a hideout in the Powai area of neighbouring Mumbai after multiple police teams used technical surveillance and intelligence inputs to trace him on Thursday.

The child was playing outside his house in the Sawandhe area of Bhiwandi around 9.30 am when the accused lured him away, Inspector Harshawardhan Barave of the Bhiwandi taluka police station said.