City Pulse

A lost child. What could have become a nightmare and added one more child to the increasing statistics on missing children, turned into a happy story. All thanks to the Community Policing initiative by Bengaluru City Police in partnership with Janaagraha and vigilant Area Suraksha Mitra (ASM) Ms. Radha Chandrashekar.

On October 7, Radha received a call from her friend Sridhar that a child of Nepali origin was sitting on the steps of a restaurant in Ramamurthy Nagar and crying. She was unable to understand the local language and was reluctant to speak. Radha rushed to the spot and communicated with the child in Hindi. The child informed Radha, that she has lost her way and her house is near a ‘Pakoda’ (fritter) shop.

“I took the child in my vehicle and showed her different roads in the locality, hoping she would recognize the area where her house was located. However, this was not of much use. I also put the child’s photo in various community Whatsapp groups hoping people in the neighbourhood would know her family. But there was not much luck,” Radha tells Team Janaagraha.

Radha then called Janaagraha’s Community Policing Manager Deepak Naik, who advised her to file a report with the Ramamurthy Nagar Police Station. Radha lodged a complaint of missing child and requested the police to let her have custody of the child till her parents were found.

Meanwhile, one of Radha’s friends suggested talking to watchmen of Nepali origin as most of the apartment managements had hired watchmen hailing from Nepal. One of the watchmen also put the child’s photo and details on their community group.

After sometime, a person who saw the missing child post on the Nepal community’s Whatsapp group contacted Radha and claimed to be the child’s father. However, Radha said that she will hand over the girl only in the police station and asked the person to get the child’s identity proof.

The person named Susheel accompanied by his wife and a 6 month-old baby came to Ramamurthy Nagar police station with the required identity proof. The child also recognized the couple as her parents.

It was then revealed that the child was playing in the apartment complex and had followed her mother, who was going to work. When the mother sent her back, she took a wrong route and wandered further away from her house.

The police warned the child’s parents to be careful and keep an eye on children. Radha shudders at the thought of the child reaching the wrong hands and says she is relieved that the story has a happy ending.

Radha Chandrashekar volunteered to become an Area Suraksha Mitra in 2015. “Social service was always in my blood,” says the single-mother who is the founder of DPR Vybhava Cultural Academy, an institution that teaches children dance and karate.

This is not the first missing child case Radha has handled. In 2017, she had helped a family reunite with their two-year-old who went missing in a crowded temple.

Not just that, she also put an end to the begging racket in Ramamurthy Nagar, where parents used to send children to people’s houses and make them beg for money under the pretext of books and stationery.

For her social service, Radha was awarded ‘Mrs Inspiration’ in Mrs India Karnataka I Am Powerful 2018 beauty pageant. She has also been feted for being an active ASM by the Ramamurthy Nagar police.

Community policing (CP) is an initiative of Bengaluru city police in partnership with Janaagraha. The objective of the programme is to address neighbourhood safety and security concerns through responsible participation of the citizenry in crime prevention, at the level of the local community.