CHENNAI:A good Samaritan’s attempt to drop a child to her school triggered a major scare in Kundrathur on Wednesday after the 7-year-old daughter of a migrant family, who spoke only Hindi, ended up at the wrong school, leading to a police complaint and frantic searches by the parents and officials.
The girl, whose parents work in a private factory near Kundrathur, was recently enrolled in Class 1 at the Government Middle School in Irandam Kattalai.
On Tuesday, she left for school as usual. When she failed to return home in the evening, her parents went to the school to search for her, only to be told that she never came to the school.
Fearing that she was kidnapped, the parents filed a complaint at the Kundrathur police station. When they checked the CCTV footage, officials saw a woman stopping her two-wheeler near the girl, offering the child a ride and then riding away with her.
Police traced the woman using the vehicle number. The woman said she saw the young girl in uniform carrying a school bag, and spoke to her in Tamil to offer a lift. When she asked which school, the child replied in Hindi, which she did not understand.
Assuming the child attended the nearby Thandalam Government School, the woman dropped her off at its gates and left. The police, along with the parents and the woman, rushed to the Thandalam Government School, where they found the girl in the principal's office.
The principal told the police that when the girl came in, the school authorities realised that she was lost. Attempts to communicate were not successful, as the girl only understood Hindi, not Tamil or English.
Also, her school bag did not have any identification, including the school name, parents’ address, or contact number.
The school authorities decided to keep the girl in the office, assuming that her parents or authorities would come searching. They were planning to hand her over to the police later in the evening if no one arrived.
Following the incident, headmasters of all schools in Kundrathur, Irandam Kattalai, and Thandalam areas issued advisories to parents asking them to place a note inside their child's school bag, with details of the child's name, the school's name, the parents' names, home address, and contact phone number in both Tamil and English.