Mumbai: A four-year-old girl who went missing from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus in May was reunited with her parents after a six-month search that took Mumbai Police across states, into crowded railway stations, shelters and orphanages - a case that officers now describe as one of the most emotionally charged case studies in recent years.

The child disappeared on May 20 while her parents, who had travelled from Solapur for medical treatment, paused briefly at CSMT. A kidnapping FIR was registered at MRA Marg police station, and what followed was a painstaking investigation involving hundreds of hours of CCTV footage from CSMT to Lokmanya Tilak Terminus and further along routes leading out of the city. Multiple teams were sent to Uttar Pradesh as part of what the force internally referred to as Operation Shodh, a long and often discouraging hunt for the smallest possible lead.

The breakthrough came in Varanasi months later, when a local journalist noticed a missing-child poster circulated by Mumbai Police and recalled a little girl in a city orphanage who speaks Marathi. The girl had been found near the railway tracks in June and admitted to a shelter, where she was given the name “Kashi”. Mumbai Police officers flew to the city and, after a video call with her parents, confirmed her identity.

Officers who were part of the search said they had kept the investigation alive even when the trail grew faint, driven by the image of the child that some carried in their shirt pockets. “We couldn’t close the file. We owed it to the family,” an investigator said.

The child was brought back to Mumbai soon after the confirmation, leading to an emotional reunion with her parents, who had spent months visiting police stations and neighbourhoods with her photograph.

While the kidnapper has not yet been traced and the investigation continues, senior officials say the case stands out as a reminder of how persistence, coordination and one decisive tip-off can bring a lost child home.

BI Bureau