Pathankot police trace runaway kids, reunite them with family

The Pathankot police traced the location of four runaway school students and finally reunited them with their distraught parents, a development which has earned them kudos from local residents and the school management.

Shahid Ali (17), Kunal Sharma (15), Umar Zaada (15) and Arshad Ali (14) were reprimanded by their teachers over some issue following which they decided to run away and start life afresh in some other city. The only hitch was that only one of the four students had some money in his possession while the remaining three had decided to make the move without having any money on them.

On the intervening night of November 18 and 19, the students boarded a train to New Delhi. They are students of the city-based Angel Public School.

Acting on a verbal complaint, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Daljinder Singh Dhillon pressed his technical team into action.

While on board the train, the students ran out of whatever money they had and subsequently contacted one of their common friends through a social media site.

Only one of the students had a mobile phone.

The technical team got in touch with the friend and asked him to start giving them money in small installments so that the team could buy enough time to trace their location.

Even as the students demanded money from their friend in one go, he acted as per the police's instructions and started depositing the amount in small installments. The team kept a tab on the location of the phone being used by the students.

Finally, as the train stopped at the New Delhi railway station, the cops swooped on them while they were loitering and were planning their next move. "We were afraid that the battery of the student's phone might run out of power. In that scenario, it would have been really difficult for us to trace them. However, nothing of that kind happened and our men caught them and brought them back to Pathankot much to the relief of their parents and friends,"

the SSP said.

SSP Dhillon was full of praise for the Pathankot police cyber cell "which worked hard to trace the case." A police officer said the students were in need of counselling "to bring them out of the trauma they had to undergo".

"Simultaneously, we also request the school authorities to act with restraint to ensure such incidents do not happen in the future," he said.