Forty-year-old Jitendra Kumar Gupta, a vegetable vendor in Govindpuri, denied beating up his 15-year-old daughter or avoiding the police. “On Thursday night, they called me to the police station. My daughter was in the SHO’s room, and she looked fine. I can meet her only at the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) hearing on January 31... I was dying to speak to my daughter to find out what happened to her, but I was not allowed to,” Gupta said.

Meanwhile, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights asked police to conduct a detailed probe into the case, and submit a factual report within a fortnight.

Police told Newsline that the girl was taken for a “spot visit” to rebuild the turn of events. When told that she had alleged being beaten up by him frequently, Gupta said, “I would scold her like any father would, if she did something wrong. How could I ill-treat my only child?”

When his daughter went missing in June last year, Gupta said he suspected women in his colony of “selling her off”. However, sources say he had not returned to his rented home in Sangam Vihar after his daughter disappeared. Recounting the events from that morning in June 1, Gupta said he had returned home around 1 am after work to find that his daughter

was missing. “I named five women in my kidnapping complaint — all tenants. They had been acting unusually interested in my daughter. But the police called my landlord instead,” he alleged.

Gupta added he had not heard of Rajkumar, his daughter’s alleged lover, or the baby. Ajay Chaudhari, Addl CP (Southeast), said, “We are trying to trace Rajkumar for further leads.”

After Gupta’s wife passed away five years ago of a “fever and vomiting”, he had sent the girl to an orphanage in Daryaganj. “Things became better then, and she was also studying in a nearby government school. She completed Class VII from there, and then they referred her to a Gurgaon home. She was studying in Class IX when she disappeared,” he added.

The girl reportedly stayed with her uncle’s family for two months during the holidays, before coming to his house. “She said she did not want to study further, so I decided to keep her with me. A month and a half later, she disappeared,” the father said.