Woman and her 2 children vanish from a train in West Bengal, probe begins

A 24-year-old woman, Puja Jha, a resident of Samastipur, has gone missing along with her three-year-old daughter and two-year-old son from the Tata Nagar bound Chhapra-Tata Festival Express, when the train was passing through West Bengal on Thursday. She was travelling on the train with her husband in a sleeper coach.

Puja’s phone is switched off and her relatives have approached the railway GRP. The incident yet again raised questions on the security of passengers travelling in trains.

“The family boarded the train from the Samastipur railway station on the evening of December 2 in a sleeper compartment. The husband says he was woken up by cries for help from his wife and kids but could not find them in the coach.

The husband of the missing woman then filed a complaint with the Government Railway Police (GRP) at Tata Nagar railway station after a rigorous search was conducted for his wife and children, police said.

Sandip Kumar Jha, a native of Madhubani district who works in a private company at Jugsalai (Tata) in Jharkhand, said he suspected his wife and children had been abducted because they went missing with two luggage bags containing cash, ATM cards, gold ornaments and cell phones.

Sandip complaint filed with the Tata Nagar Railway station GRP was transferred to Asansol GRP. Officers of Tata Nagar GRP were not ready to comment on the possible reasons for the woman and her children’s disappearance.

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According to Sandip, the family together had dinner at around 8.30 pm when the train was passing through Barauni Junction before they went to sleep. Sandip says he was travelling on berth number 39 while his wife was on berth number 32.

“Everything was fine and there is no reason for her to vanish like this on her own. I am sure she was abducted,” said Sandip.

The couple were married on April 22, 2016.

Asansol GRP officials said they had started a probe and were in touch with their counterparts in Jharkhand. They, however, didn’t rule out a possible theory that the woman could have deboarded with her children at Asansol Junction on her own.

“The information with the photos of missing persons has already been sent to all the stations in the route. Our officers are exploring all possible angles but cannot say right now whether it is a case of abduction,” said Niladri Chakraborty, superintendent of rail police (Howrah).