MONDAY, MAY 06, 2024
PRATIK PARAB
PANJIM: The story of the two abandoned children, the circumstances and how the duo were left in Margao, is nothing less than a two-and-a-half-hour Manmohan Desai movie. Characters after character have unfolded in the case with the tracing of their biological mother at the Margao railway station. It’s a story of two marriages, jealousy, money and planning that has been revealed, but is it fully out?
Anjali Pandey, the woman who Konkan Railway police tracked, has claimed to be the biological mother of the three-year-old girl and the two-year-old boy.
Anjali and her husband Manu Pandey lived in Junnar near Pune, where he worked in a factory. Anjali was his second wife and Manu previously had one more wife Nikita who has two kids. She resides in Bihar.
Though Nikita had her own life, she wasn’t very happy with Manu spending his money on his second wife Anjali and her kids.
Manu has a liver infection ailment. The ailment worsened recently and Nikita came to know about the same. Nikita along with her current lover and her children came to Pune to see her ex-husband. They together decided that they would go to Bihar, their native place for the treatment of Manu. However, on reaching Buxar they realised that it is extremely cold there and decided to come to Goa on a return train.
Anjali had no idea what was going on. All eight people were travelling in the same train. However, all of them allegedly deserted Anjali in the train and alighted at some railway station in Goa with her kids. Anjali now has no bag or mobile phone, it has been taken by the group. Puzzled, Anjali proceeded to Mangaluru.
A probability that during this attempt the group abandoned the children. Anjali had realised that her daughter and her son were missing. She had no money to travel or attempt some search effort. While searching for her children she found out that some abandoned children had been found in Margao. She begged and borrowed some money from rickshaw operators and took a train to Margao.
Devastated by the incident, she was sitting all alone at the railway station in Margao when the Konkan Railway Police saw her. Upon inquiry, Anjali revealed that the abandoned kids are hers.
She was brought to the Margao Police station where she explained what all happened during the entire train journey. She also identified the two kids as hers.
While the police are trying to find the persons who had abandoned the kids and were seen in the CCTV footage there is one question that still remains unanswered...why did the persons abandon the kids? Why did they separate them while abandoning them? Why did they leave the kids without the mother? What was the motive of the act? Why did the group choose Goa as an option to beat the cold climate of Bihar? Do these children really belong to Anjali? Was the entire plan executed with the help and consent of Manu Pandey?
Manu, Nikita and her lover hold all the answers to the jigsaw puzzle.
Social activist Auda Viegas, asks a pertinent question, “Why did they choose Goa over the entire country?”
The Police now have an uphill task to trace the accused persons and bring out the real story but until then the mystery is far from resolved.
