Mumbai: Less than 24 hours after a 15-month-old boy was kidnapped from his home in Bhayander town, the Thane district police arrested a suspect and restored the boy safely to his parents.

“We have arrested a 25-year-old kidnapper — identified as one Vikram Rajput — late last night. We found him with the child in hand moving around suspiciously at the Vasai Railway station in Thane district,” Police officer AB Phullarwar of the Navghar police station said on Saturday.

According to Phullarwar, the child had disappeared from his residence in Navghar locality of Bhayander town in the Thane district at around 8pm on Thursday.

The distraught parents carried out a frantic search for the child in their neighbourhood all through the night. Simultaneously, one of their relatives Kersingh Thakula, 55, lodged a complaint with the Navghar police about the missing child.

Acting on the complaint, the Navghar police flashed messages about the missing child to various police stations in Thane district.

During a routine patrol, some policemen on duty at the Vasai Railway station found an youngster moving around suspiciously with a child in his hand. “The policemen apprehended the youngster on one of the platforms of the railway station and questioned him. The youngster — who identified himself as one Vikram Rajput — admitted that he was a neighbour of the child’s family at Navghar and that he had kidnapped the baby boy,” Phullawar said.

Though the investigators have restored the kidnapped child to his parents, they have not yet established as to the motive behind the kidnap. “The alleged kidnapper had not demanded any ransom from the parents of the child. We do not however rule possibility that he might have been planning to demand ransom from the child’s parents. We are confident of establishing the motive during the custodial interrogation,” a senior police officer investigating the case said.

The police have meanwhile registered a case under section 363 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which deals with the offence of kidnapping.

Preliminary investigations have revealed that the arrested youngster is unemployed. “We have a reason to believe that he might have kidnapped the child in the hope of making some quick money,” the police officer said.