Aaron was just a month-old baby when a woman kidnapped him in Chennai on November 29, 2014. The police couldn’t trace him and the child grew with his kidnapper until she got arrested in a murder case in 2017. Thereafter, he was raised in a child care home and as luck would have it, he has been reunited with his parents now at the age of eight.
A. John Jabaraj, 35, a goods vehicle driver from Ayanavaram in Chennai, says, he got married to J. Tamilarasi at the Besant Nagar Annai Velankanni Shrine in 2013 and Aaron was their first child born on October 28, 2014. They had taken the month-old baby for vaccination to a government hospital where the kidnapper S. Devi got acquainted with them.
Since the couple was residing in Tirumullaivoyal, the kidnapper woman visited their house in the guise of seeking help in locating a house on rent near their residence. And when Mr. Jabaraj had gone out for work and his wife had been to a nearby teashop, the woman took away the baby from their house and went absconding.
The Tirumullaivoyal police closed the ‘baby missing case’ on October 10, 2015 since they were unable to trace the child even after a year despite best efforts. The couple too lost all hopes of finding him and gave birth to their second son on December 15, 2015 and a baby girl on January 25, 2018.
“However, deep inside my heart, I believed in God’s providence. I finally spotted the kidnapper woman at Anna Nagar in Chennai on August 5, 2022 when I had gone there on work. I followed her, shot a video and called the cops by dialling 100 but she escaped by the time the police could reach the spot,” he says.
The desperate father rushed to the Tirumullaivoyal police who reopened the 2014 baby missing case. He also petitioned the Chief Minister’s grievance redressal cell which gave the much needed impetus to the case. The police accelerated the hunt using available clues and arrested the woman on February 2, 2023.
An inquiry with her revealed that she had handed over the child to the Villivakkam police in Chennai in 2017 when she got arrested in a murder case. Then, she did not reveal that he was kidnapped by her and therefore, the police had admitted the child in Bala Mandir Kamaraj Trust at T. Nagar in Chennai.
Though she got acquitted from the murder case in 2021, she did not go in search of the child and the boy continued to grow at the child care home where he was named Aaron. He had now completed Class II and promoted to Class III. A DNA analysis performed at Kilpauk Government Hospital in March this year confirmed the paternity of the child.
Immediately, the parents moved a habeas corpus petition in the Madras High Court, through their counsel M. Himavanth, seeking his custody. Appearing before Justices Anita Sumanth and M. Nirmal Kumar, Additional Public Prosecutor S. Rajakumar said, it might not be in the interest of the child to shift him from the child care home immediately.
The APP said it might take some time for the child to accept his parents as well as siblings since he had got kidnapped at a tender age of one month and was seeing his kith and kin for the first time after eight years. He suggested the child could be allowed to reside in the child care home for a few more months.
Finding justification in his suggestion, the Division Bench ordered that the parents could visit the child anytime they want and they could also take him to their house at regular intervals so that he gets accustomed to their way of life and accepts their care and protection. The court also decided to keep the case pending and monitor the progress.
“My baby was kidnapped even before we could name him. Then, we had not even obtained his birth certificate. Now that I have got back my child, I want to name him after my father Anthoni,” says Mr. Jabaraj.
