Kheda: A murder case that remained unsolved for two years has been solved through a combination of police sensitivity, alertness, and technology. The murderer, who killed a woman and left her innocent daughter next to the woman’s dead body, has finally been caught. The head constable who solved the case stated that the face and red eyes of the innocent girl abandoned beside the body had made a lasting impression on him; one day, a post on Instagram featuring a child with similar eyes helped him solve the entire crime.

Talking about the whole case, Head Constable Pradeep Singh said that, “Due to his work in the LCB’s technical cell, he often visits crime scenes to assist with technical matters. However, he has never been able to forget a murder case registered at Nadiad Rural Police Station on December 5, 2022. A woman’s murdered body was found on the Ahmedabad-Baroda Expressway, and a three-year-old innocent girl, Khushi, was crying in an injured condition next to her. The girl identified herself as Khushi and stated her father’s name as Uday and her mother’s name as Pooja in Hindi. She kept saying, “Papa ne mommy ko maar diya, mujhe bhi patak kar chale gaye, Kanaiya ko leke chale gaye…'”

“Khushi’s words and her tear-filled eyes never left my mind. She was placed in a child care institution in Kheda for proper care and upbringing. Our SP, Rajesh Gadhia, regularly inquired about the case’s progress in every crime conference and ordered special efforts to solve it. Under the guidance of our P.I., my colleagues and I visited the institution from time to time, trying to locate her father or any possible leads by talking to Khushi sympathetically. We worked day and night to identify the deceased woman, locate the abandoned girl’s relatives, and solve the murder case. Since their facial features and clothing suggested they were migrants, we created posters in Gujarati and Hindi, displaying their photos. We distributed these posters on interstate buses and trains, sought leads through social media, and analyzed mobile tower data from the crime scene, but we had no success,” he added.

Explaining further, he said, “Then, a week ago, on February 7, 2025, I was scrolling through Instagram at home at 8:30 p.m. after finishing my office work when I came across a post. It was about a child found on the Ahmedabad-Baroda Expressway, within the limits of Vasad Police Station in Anand district. The details in the post seemed strikingly similar to the 2022 case. As soon as I saw the child’s photo, Khushi’s eyes, which had been etched in my mind for two years, flashed before me. Those same vivid eyes. Another similarity was in the details of the post, which mentioned the names Kanaiya and Uday. Which reminded me of Khushi taking the name of Kanhaiya.

“I immediately contacted the inspector, and the next morning, we reached the orphanage in Anand where the boy was kept. He spoke Hindi, though indistinctly. After talking to the boy for a while, we made a video call to Khushi. Within three seconds, she exclaimed, “Kanaiya…!” That was it—confirmation that they were siblings. Now, it was clear that their father was the murderer. But where was he? And why had he abandoned this son too? There were still many unanswered questions,” the cop said.

He also states, “We took Kanaiya to Khushi. They immediately started playing together at the ashram. We joined them, behaving like children to earn their trust. Then, we handed Kanaiya a mobile phone. While he was playing, we casually asked him to call his father. But the Kanaiya could only recall the first five digits: 95862… as that was all he remembered!”

“From there, we re-examined the mobile tower data dump collected during the 2022 investigation. Among 40 numbers beginning with those five digits, we filtered out those belonging to different states—assuming the family had migrated. This led us to four numbers of interest. Using a third-party app, we searched one of these numbers and found a profile picture—a bodybuilding photo. When we showed it to Khushi and Kanaiya, they immediately pointed and said, “Papa!” stated the policemen.

Pradeep explained, “With this crucial evidence, we traced the location and details of the user. Nadiad police arrested the accused, Uday, in Ahmedabad. He had murdered his wife and abandoned his two children two years ago. His second wife, who had later abandoned Kanaiya on the expressway, was also arrested.”

The brutal murderer of these two children’s mother was none other than their own father, Uday. Today, seeing the siblings happily playing together at Matrichaya Sanstha brings me immense joy, the policemen added.

State Police Chief Shri Vikas Sahay has congratulated Head Constable Pradeep Singh and the entire Kheda-Nadiad police team for their sensitivity, alertness, and use of technology in solving this shocking murder case. DeshGujarat