An anti-bootlegging police team attached to the Arakkonam sub-division in Tamil Nadu picked up the 4-year-old son of an absconding bootlegger to force him to surrender in connection with a prohibition case.
The police team picked up the boy, a UKG student, while he was going to school in the school van on Thursday morning. Superintendent of police of Vellore P Pakalavan has ordered Arakkonam assistant superintendent of police Sakthi Ganesan to conduct a detailed inquiry into the incident.
AP
Sources in the police department said sub-inspector of police (training) Kanchana and four policemen went in search of Vadagiri, a bootlegger and a resident of Mel Avatham near Arakkonam town, on Thursday morning.
The cops asked Vedagiri's wife Sangeetha about his whereabouts. Sangeetha told them that she didn't know about her husband's whereabouts.
The cops came to know that the couple's son had just left for school. They stopped the school van near Kamarajar Statue in Madhi Mangalam at around 9am, and the boy was to the police, said a police official on condition of anonymity. The boy is studying at a private school in Anwarthikhanpet in Arakkonam.
Upon information, Sangeetha rushed to the school and picked up a quarrel with the school correspondent asking for her son. The school correspondent went to the police station and found the boy playing on the police station premises. He took the boy with him and handed him over to his mother around 10.30am.
"The woman SI, without knowing the seriousness of the issue, would have taken the boy to the station. The boy was playing on the station premises when the school correspondent reached there," said the source.
"A preliminary inquiry has been conducted. The SI had summoned the prohibition offender's wife, who has also been aiding her husband in the illegal act. But the woman didn't cooperate and threatened the cops. This forced the SI to take to boy away. However, the SI didn't want to take the boy to police station. The boy was later returned to his mother," said a senior police officer.
The prohibition offender's wife had fabricated the story for her defence and to protect her husband, the police officer added.