Runaway Bengaluru girl rescued from Delhi railway station

The Railway Protection Force (RPF) on Wednesday rescued a 13-year-old Bengaluru girl from the New Delhi railway station, who had run away from home following a tiff with her parents over her excessive smartphone usage.

A student of Class 8 from suburban Bengaluru, the teenager boarded the Karnataka Express Special train from Bengaluru city on Monday with a confirmed ticket for New Delhi.

Ajay Buwa, a journalist working in Delhi for Sakal, a Marathi newspaper, who boarded the same train at Manmad on Tuesday evening and his co-passenger Bablu Singh, noticed the girl travelling alone in their compartment.

On inquiry, the girl, who spoke Kannada and broken English, said that she was staying in Delhi with her grandmother and studying in a local school. She also said she had gone to her hometown and got stuck due to lockdown.

“I became suspicious about the girl and immediately alerted TTE (Travelling Ticket Examiner). When TTE came, he found that she had a confirmed ticket till New Delhi and said her uncle will come to the railway station and receive her,” Buwa told Deccan Herald.

He also gave her a jacket and a bedsheet to protect herself from the cold weather conditions.

As the train approached Delhi, Buwa also alerted the Railway Protection Force (RPF) about a girl travelling alone in a train.

As the train reached New Delhi Railway Station, the RPF personnel escorted the girl and waited for her uncle to come and receive her.

As no one turned up to receive the teenager, the RPF reached out to the Delhi Kannada Sangh Secretary C M Nagraj, who rushed office staff Devaiah to the railway station to assist the girl.

The girl was not carrying any mobile phone, but the RPF found a phone number in a book she was carrying and reached out to her parents.

After speaking to the parents, the RPF learnt that the girl had left the home following a tiff over excessive use of a smartphone given to her to attend online classes.

The parents had filed a missing person report with the Bengaluru Rural District Police.

The girl claimed that she was influenced by Radha-Krishna serial on a Kannada television channel and had set out in search of Krishna, her favourite god and even planned to visit Mathura.

According to the RPF, the girl’s parents were reaching Delhi to take her back home.