By Imran Khan, IANS
Patna : Fourteen days after their 12-year-old son was kidnapped here and having lost their faith in the police, the distraught parents are now seeking divine intervention for the safe return of their child.
Akash Pandey was kidnapped while on his way to school in a posh Patna locality Aug 10. Despite repeated assurances by the police, there is no information about the Class 8 student.
“We have little faith in the police finding him. Only god can help us,” a close relative of the abducted boy said despairingly.
“Instead of keeping us informed about the steps taken to recover my son, the police have been asking us to help them,” Akash’s father Yogendra Pandey said. “I don’t understand this.”
The Pandeys have turned to doing Hindu rituals expecting religion will succeed where the police have failed.
According to Manoj Sharma, a relative, the Pandeys have turned one of their rooms into a mini temple since last week so as to pray that their Akash returns home safely.
Akash’s mother Anju said: “I am bowing my head before god day and night as I know my son will return safely with divine blessings.”
Sharma said: “They have been spending hours praying and fasting. But the police are completely in the dark.”
Neighbours said the parents and Akash’s sisters Akanksha and Ankita have not been eating properly since the abduction. Sheela Devi, anpther neighbour, said that Anju was surviving on just water and tea.
His sisters are finding it difficult to appear for their end-of-term exams in progress in their school, she said.
The students of DAV School, where Akash was a student, and other schools took out a procession last week, organised special prayers and observed a token fast to put pressure on the state administration to recover him.
Kidnapping has become a thriving industry in Bihar. Nearly 5,000 people, including hundreds of children, have been abducted across the state in the past one year. In the first six months of 2007, 2,217 people were kidnapped.
Figures received by the Patna High Court from district judges indicate that there were about 1,800 cases of kidnapping registered in Bihar in 2006 against 1,697 cases in 2005.
However, M.P. Gupta, a senior lawyer of the Patna High Court, put the figure higher saying that 4,849 cases of kidnapping took place in Bihar from July 2006 to June 2007.
Professionals, businessmen and school students from well-off families are often the target of kidnappers.