The Railway Protection Force (RPF) police on Wednesday rescued a 13-year-old Bengaluru girl who fled home after her parents scolded her for excessively using her smartphone.
The Class 8 student from Bengaluru suburbs boarded the Karnataka Express Special train on Monday with a confirmed ticket to New Delhi.
Ajay Buwa, a journalist who boarded the train at Manmad on Tuesday evening, and his co-passenger Babu Singh noticed the girl travelling alone in their compartment.
On inquiring, the girl, who spoke in Kannada and broken English, said she was staying with her grandmother in Delhi and studying at a local school. She said she had gone to her hometown and was stuck there due to the Covid-19 lockdown.
“I grew suspicious about the girl,” Buwa, who works for Sakal, a Marathi newspaper in Delhi, told DH. “I immediately alerted the Travelling Ticket Examiner (TTE), who found that she had a confirmed ticket to New Delhi. She said her uncle would receive her at the station.”
Buwa gave her a jacket and a bedsheet to wrap herself against the cold weather. As the train approached New Delhi, he also alerted the RPF about the girl travelling alone.
When the train arrived in New Delhi, RPF police escorted her and waited until her uncle came to fetch her. Since no one turned up, the RPF reached out to Delhi Kannada Sangh secretary C M Nagaraj, who sent his office staff Devaiah to the railway station to assist the girl.
While the girl was not carrying a mobile phone, they found a phone number in a book she was carrying and spoke to her parents.
After speaking to them, police had learnt that the girl had argued with them over the excessive use of the smartphone they gave her to attend online classes.
The parents had filed a missing person complaint with the Bengaluru Rural police.
In search for her favourite god Krishna
The girl claimed that she was influenced by Radha-Krishna, her favourite Kannada serial on television, and had set out to search for her favourite god Krishna. She had a plan to visit Mathura.
RPF said the girl’s parents are reaching New Delhi to take her back home.