After receiving a complaint from a child welfare organisation’s telephone helpline in the city, the police arrested a couple here on Friday on the charge of branding a four-year-old girl child with a hot iron and causing burn injuries.

During police interrogation, it was revealed that the girl was not their daughter and was brought to Vadodara from Kolkata by them, without any legal documents from her mother Reshma Khatun.

The police took the mother’s Kolkata number from Jafar Pathan and called her to the city to know the facts.

After she arrived in the city, Khatun told the police that she had given her daughter to the Pathan family since she is not in a position to bring the girl up because of her poor economic condition. She denied that she allowed the couple to adopt the girl.

Khatun told the police that she did not like the manner in which her daughter was treated by the Pathan family.

‘Gave daughter in good faith’



“I gave my daughter to them in good faith, since they wanted her because they had no daughter and were blessed with two sons,” she said.

Jafar Pathan admitted to the police that his wife had caused burn injuries on the girl’s body. He also admitted that he had not exchanged any legal documents with her mother.

The in-charge of the juvenile home here where the girl is being kept has refused to give the girl’s possession to her mother, saying it could be done only after the higher authorities gave the approval.

Khatun has been camping in the city for the past couple of days to get possession of her daughter from the juvenile home.

“A proper inquiry will be done before taking any decision on it. It will be discussed with both parties,” Vadodara District Collector Vinod Rao told PTI.

Khatun told the police that Jafar Pathan and his family, who used to be her neighbours in Kolkata, had brought the girl to Vadodara about a year ago, promising her that her daughter would be educated well in the city.

A mother of two daughters, Khatun allowed the Pathans to take the four-year-old to Vadodara, since her daughter had become close to the family and be with them most of the time, when she used to go to work, she said.