Abandoned in forest, 2-year-old walks for 20 hours, survives

BHOPAL: A two-year-old boy, unclothed waist down, walked barefoot alone for nearly 20 hours through a forest full of wild animals after his father allegedly killed his mother and abandoned him in a remote patch of Madhya Pradesh.

The stunning survival story ended with cops finding the weak and dehydrated toddler early Sunday in a remote patch along the Vidisha-Raisen border after arresting his father. So hungry and thirsty was the baby that he grabbed food and water the cops offered him before he was rushed to hospital and stabilised.

“It was a miracle that he survived,” said Sonali Gupta, sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) of Begumganj, the pocket where the rescuers found the child, nearly 2km from the spot where he had been abandoned.

The horrors started unfolding Saturday noon when the child’s father, a 25-year-old from a village in Vidisha district’s Haidergarh area, allegedly crushed his wife’s head with a stone, police said. Their son was with them at the time.

After the killing, the man took the child on his motorcycle and rode about 2km into adjoining Raisen district’s Begumganj belt. He dumped the child near a stream behind a temple in the dense forest and fled, leaving his motorcycle behind. The area, the police said, is known for the movement of wild animals, making survival a challenge even for adults.

The accused was later arrested after the woman’s body was discovered. According to the police, the man tried to fob off investigators during his initial rounds of questioning, not even mentioning that he had dumped his son. This delayed rescue efforts.

Later, as the cops expanded the probe and got in touch with other family members, they learnt about the missing toddler. By then, darkness had set in. Multiple teams were formed and a search was launched. Police teams scoured jungles, farms, water bodies and isolated patches through the night, using torches and local inputs to trace the child.

“We combed the area continuously. Around 8.30am on Sunday, we heard a faint sound and found the child walking,” SDPO Gupta said. Investigators suspect the child had walked through the night. Investigators said the terrain where the child was abandoned is uneven, has thick vegetation and poor visibility at night, increasing the risk of injury, exposure and encounters with animals. None of the perils appeared to have come in the way of the braveheart boy in his fight for survival and of being the sole eyewitness to his mother’s murder.