Mumbai: A 16-year-old girl from Bhandup staged her own kidnapping to avoid being scolded by her mother over her studies.

According to the Bhandup police, the incident occurred on Saturday. The girl, a class 10 student, left for school at 7 am as usual. When she failed to return by 1 pm, her worried parents contacted her classmates and school authorities, but no one knew where she was. After a search, her family eventually found her sitting outside a railway station.

When asked why she was there, the girl claimed that three men had kidnapped her in an auto-rickshaw from outside her school and later threw her out near the railway station. Her parents immediately approached the Bhandup police, who registered an FIR for kidnapping and sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, since she was a minor.

The police launched an investigation and reviewed CCTV footage from the areas mentioned by the girl. However, the footage showed her walking alone from her school to the railway station. Upon further questioning, the girl confessed that she had fabricated the story to avoid being scolded for not focusing on her studies ahead of her board exams. She explained that, when her family found her at the station, she panicked and invented the kidnapping story as an excuse for her absence.

The Bhandup police have since closed the investigation.