Two sentenced to 10 years’ jail for kidnapping child

HT Correspondent, Hindustan Times, New Delhi, April 17, 2011

A Delhi court has sentenced a woman and her associate to 10 years’ imprisonment for kidnapping an infant in 2008. Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau said that kidnapping of infants has become a lucrative business. The police said Ritu Kapoor (42) and Mohd Jiyaul (26), a rickshaw puller, are "habitual child lifters". 

The court said that no leniency could be shown to them, as "neither the child nor his body has been recovered."

The police said that the accused Ritu reached the complainant Anita's house and introduced herself as a government representative under the 'Ladli' scheme and asked for details of her child. Co-accused Jiyaul was waiting in an auto rickshaw.

Later, Ritu took the complainant’s one-and-half-month-old baby and fled from the spot in Jiyaul's vehicle.

Police failed to recover the baby.  Ritu, arrested at Rajouri Garden in another kidnapping case, revealed her complicity in the matter. Jiyaul was arrested later. The court rejected Ritu's plea that she was "mentally disturbed".

The court said, "The convict (Ritu) has raised this plea at this stage as a last defence only to wriggle out and escape the penal consequences of her illegal acts”.

The court said that so far as the child is concerned, it is too small to identify anybody. The situation becomes all the more difficult when the victim belongs to a very poor family and the family of the child is unable to provide any identification proof in the form of photograph etc, it said.

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