Mumbai: The parents of an 11-year-old autistic child, who had abandoned him in an autorickshaw on Wednesday evening in Alibag beach, Raigad district, have returned to a police station to collect their child.

“Perhaps the parents, who hail from Panvel, had a change of heart — or they may have got worried that they would be found out since Raigad police had already issued an alert,” Prashant Vartak, a police official in Alibag, told Gulf News.

Not only was an alert issued, a case was also registered against an unidentified person and police asked people to inform them if they had any information about the child or his family.

Police say that a man in his forties, apparently the father of the boy, had hired a rickshaw from Joglekar Naka to Alibag beach on Wednesday. He left the child in the autorickshaw, paid the driver Rs100 (Dh5.4) and told him he would return quickly with a friend.

However, he did not return for almost an hour and when the driver, Anant Shelar, asked the child about the person, he did not answer. He found that the child could not speak.

Shelar brought the child to the Alibag police station at around 8.15pm.

The boy refused to get down from the auto but a policeman managed to get him out and take him inside the police station. The official said that a note and Rs300 was found in the pocket of the child.

The note said the parents could not take care of Manish — the child’s name — as they could not afford treatment for their son. Moreover, doctors had told them that the child’s medical and mental condition was such that nothing could be done to improve it.

Raigad Police PRO Dharmaraj Sonke said the boy was then taken to a children’s home in Karjat and a case registered against unidentified persons under Section 317 of the Indian penal Code — exposure and abandonment of child under 12 years by parents or person taking care of him/her.

Police are now questioning the parents who returned to Alibag police station on Friday afternoon.

It may take some time for the parents to regain custody of their child as certain formalities have to be completed.