A 34-year-old man was arrested Friday for allegedly kidnapping a five-year-old boy from New Delhi Railway Station, police said.

A woman from Odisha who had come to Delhi on Wednesday had reported her son going missing from the New Delhi Railway Station, they said. She had come from Indore in the morning to catch a train for Cuttack.

The woman was waiting on platform number 6/7 with her three children, when her youngest child went missing or possibly kidnapped by someone, police said.

Police in their investigation scoured CCTV footages from the station premises along with the complainant and spotted an unknown person carrying the kidnapped child, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Railways) Apoorva Gupta said.

On Friday morning, police got a tip-off and nabbed a man, Vikas Verma, a resident of Hathras in UP, from Shri Shakti Express, he said.

Verma, a goldsmith by profession, was last year forced to shut down his business due to huge losses and heavy debt. He had got married in 2014 and had a child, but lost the child to his wife when he separated from her in 2021, the DCP said.

After losing his business he started working as a vendor in trains.

On Wednesday, he was at the New Delhi Railway Station and saw a woman waiting on a platform with three kids. He was tempted to take away the youngest child. He first befriended the boy by offering him some eatables and then disappeared with him.

According to police, Verma took the child to Katra in Jammu the same night, and returned to NDRS Thursday morning and boarded Shri Shakti Express. He was planning to take the child to his native place, police added.

- With PTI Input