Madhya Pradesh: Parents of Missing Toddler Taken Before Temple Deity for Verification
Ratan Pal had gone missing when he was playing outside his maternal grandmother’s house in the village of Mohanpur in Gwalior district in the afternoon of November one
Bhopal: Parents of a three-year-old boy, missing since November one, were on Tuesday ‘produced’ before the ‘Magistrate Mahadev’, the presiding deity of an ancient temple in a village in Madhya Pradesh, to verify if they have any knowledge of the ‘abducted child’.
The exercise, called polygraph test of rural Madhya Pradesh, was undertaken by the ‘panch’ (village elders) in the village of Girgaon in Gwalior district to record the statements of the missing child’s parents, suspects in the case, and verify the authenticity of their depositions made before the deity, known as “Magistrate Mahadev”.
There is a belief that if anyone tells a lie before the deity, then the person will lose money to the tune of more than Rs 50,000 or a family member or a domestic animal within five days.
The ‘panch’ decided to sit at six pm on December six if either of the parties had suffered any such loss.
The suspects will be acquitted of the charges if they do not suffer any such loss.
Ratan Pal had gone missing when he was playing outside his maternal grandmother’s house in the village of Mohanpur in Gwalior district in the afternoon of November one.
His mother, Sapna Pal, has been staying with her mother in the village for the past six months after a tiff with her husband, a resident of Girgaon village.
Sapna filed a missing case in the Murar police station after she failed to locate her child.
Police launched a probe to find the missing child but has no clue so far to lead to him.
Police however suspected the role of the families of the parents of the boy child, sources said.
The police finally took resort to emotive exercise by producing the parents before the deity to extract truth from them by exploiting their devotion to the deity, sources said.
“Probe was on into the incident”, senior superintendent of police of Gwalior district Dharmaveer Singh told the media.
