KENDRAPADA: An anxious grandfather frantically looking for his missing two-year-old grandchild discovered after a long, fruitless search that his alcoholic son had sold off the little girl to a childless couple in Odis-ha’s Jajpur district for Rs 5,000 so that he could buy booze, reports Ashis Senapati.
Rabindra Barik sensed something was amiss when he asked his son Ramesh about the whereabouts of the youngest of his three children.
On being unable to trace the toddler, he accosted Ramesh again, at which the latter confessed to giving her away for cash.
Last month, Ra-mesh allegedly assaulted his wife and drove her away from the house after she objected to his heavy drinking.
In a complaint registered at Binjharapur police station on Saturday, Rabindra accused his son of trafficking his granddaughter.
He mentioned the girl had been sold off to one Mitu Jena of Hatasahi village.
A police team rescued the girl from Jena’s house and handed her over to the district unit of the Child Welfare Committee, police station in-charge Amarendra Dash said.