The stories surrounding Archie Yadav’s disappearance seem to be running in circles. While the police believes that she ran away from her house and says an investigation is underway, Archie has a different story to tell.
On February 19, the 12-year-old girl returned to her home in Indirapuram and opened up to the media about her disappearance. In her interaction with City Spidey today, she stuck to an earlier description of the incident that she had narrated to her parents and the police.
“I was instructed by a woman at my door to open the door by using the key kept on the table and follow her downstairs. After doing that I started running and was stopped by another woman, who pressed a piece of cloth against my nose that probably made me unconscious. I do not remember anything after that. I only woke up later in a train. But every time I regained my consciousness, they would do the same [press a piece of cloth against her nose],” said Archie.
When we asked her to describe the car in which she might have been taken, Archie said, “I do not remember anything, except that it was grey in colour.”
She said she regained consciousness in the train and seeing an opportune moment; she managed to escape. She reached a place where a group of buses was parked and thought that it was a bus station.
“A man noticed me and asked me who I was. When I told him I was lost, he called the Palampur police,” recalled Archie.
She also said that the train she ran away from was different from the one in which she woke up earlier. “The train that I ran away from had cushioned seats but the one in which I woke up prior to that had normal seats,” said Archie.
“The women were talking to each other but were speaking a language I couldn’t understand,” she said when we asked her if she overheard a conversation between her captors.
When we asked her for more details, she complained of having no recollection of the events. “Even though I was conscious sometimes and spoke to people, I was still not in my senses. I don’t know what happened to me,” she said.
Meanwhile, Naresh, a laundryman who sits opposite Archie’s residence, told City Spidey, “We were here all afternoon but we did not see any woman entering or leaving the house. But my daughter saw Archie leaving her house and running away crying.”
Archie’s neighbours also denied seeing any woman. “It was around 3 pm. I was probably inside having lunch. Therefore, I couldn’t have seen anything from my balcony,” said Prakash, one of the neighbours.
However, Archie’s mother said that when she was waiting at the bus stop for her elder daughter, a woman wearing a red shawl was constantly staring at her. “May be she was keeping an eye on me and was part of the gang that abducted Archie,” she said.
When City Spidey asked Pradeep Tripathi, SHO of Indirapuram police station, about the investigation, he said, “The girl and her family can believe whatever they want. We are investigating all possibilities and soon we will uncover the truth. We still think that the girl ran away from the house after leaving her school work incomplete. We even checked her bag.”
