Remember the one-year-old child who fell from a moving jeep while her parents were asleep, but crawled her way to safety inside a reserve forest in Kerala’s Idukki district? A month after the incident, which happened near the Rajamala checkpost, a new CCTV footage from the same camera at the checkpost has surfaced showing how the rescue took place. In the footage, an auto driver too can be seen helping the forest officials rescue the toddler who was crawling on the road.
On September 8, around 9.42 pm, the child, who was on the lap of her sleeping mother, fell off the jeep when the family was returning from a trip to Palani, Tamil Nadu. The first footage released by forest officials then showed the child crawling on the road for almost five minutes before she was rescued.
In the latest CCTV footage, a few minutes after the child crawled away from the peripheral view of the camera, an autorickshaw can be seen approaching and stopping at the checkpost. That’s when a forest watcher comes out of the checkpost office and points towards the direction where the toddler crawled off.
At this point, the forest watcher raises the checkpost barricade and lets the auto come ahead. Another person comes out of the office talking on his mobile, and after a brief discussion, the three then slowly start walking towards the child. A minute later, the auto driver is seen carrying the child and going inside the office along with a forest official.
The auto driver and forest watchers slowly walking towards the child
A Munnar police official, on the condition of anonymity, told TNM that the new footage was found as part of the ongoing probe against the child's parents, who were booked under the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act after the incident. It was then that we realised that an auto driver also helped the forest watchers in rescuing the child. We called him to the station a few days ago, took his statement,” the polie official said.
It was while giving his statement that Kanakaraj revealed it was he who saved the child and not the forest officials as some media reports said.
According to reports, it was Kanakaraj, the auto driver, who offered to go along with the forest watchers to check out what was happening.
Speaking to the media, Kanakaraj claimed that he stopped his vehicle when he saw something crawling on the road. “The forest watchers were afraid to approach the kid. I handed the child over to the Rajamala checkpost officials, gave my number and returned home,” said the 60-year-old, a resident of Nayamakkad estate in the KDHP plantations, Munnar.
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It was reported then that the Forest Department employee at the checkpost, on realising it was a child, had alerted higher officials of the department, following which the police immediately alerted all police stations in the area. While it is true that the forest guards had alerted higher officials, as is required in such situations, the Munnar police official told TNM that the Forest Department had released the edited CCTV footage of the incident then.
However, sources at the Forest Department said that they never claimed that they ‘rescued’ the child.
The family of the one-year-old realised that the child was missing only after reaching their house in Kambilikandam in Idukki. The child had sustained minor injuries on her head after the fall. The Munnar police registered an FIR and booked the parents under the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act.