A three-year-old Indian girl has been arrested for armed robbery and disturbing the peace after feuding neighbours filed a malicious complaint, police said on Thursday.
The girl, who has been identified only by her nickname Guddi, was at home with her family when police arrived in force to arrest her.
Her family believe the officers had been sent by local leaders of Uttar Pradesh’s ruling Samajwadi Party, who are locked in a feud with other people in their village near Jhansi.
When they arrived they demanded the suspect be brought out for questioning and become increasingly forceful as the family tried to persuade them there had been a mistake. When the officers insisted and the parents presented their three-year-old infant, the police realised they been given false information.
According to her parents, the attempt to incarcerate her was not the first time she had been accused of armed robbery – charges had been registered a year earlier when she was two years old. The family had then been so alarmed by the case that they considered fleeing their village but it took two months to persuade the police to drop the charges.
