Jaigaon, Feb. 12: A six-year-old boy from Madarihat yesterday rescued his 11-year-old sister from the clutches of a suspected trafficker who had kept both of them confined in his house in Siliguri for three days.

Anupam and Maya (names changed) had fled from their home in Madarihat’s Rabindranagar on February 8 after they were hauled up by their father for not concentrating on their studies.

Anupam is in Class I, while his sister studies in Class IV.

The duo boarded a Siliguri-bound passenger train around 3.30pm and soon met a “priest”. “He had a long beard and was clad in saffron,” said Maya today.

“He promised to take care of us if we agreed to go with him. The three of us got off at Siliguri Junction and took a rickshaw. His house was located far from the station in a deserted part of the town,” said the girl.

The rickshaw fare was Rs 25, the children remembered, and there were five small temples on the way.

“As soon as we reached his house, the man dragged me into a shed where there were three goats. I was tied to a chair and he locked the door from outside,” said Maya.

Anupam was locked in the verandah of the house. “We did not get anything but water to drink for the next three days and the man threatened to kill us if we raised the alarm,” the girl said. “He would untie me when I needed to answer nature’s call, but made me do it right in front of him.”

Maya added that she had seen a woman, who kept her face covered, come to the house and haggle with the man over the price for the children.

Yesterday, the man went out apparently to perform Saraswati Puja but left the verandah door open by mistake. Anupam immediately got hold of a piece of wood used to bolt doors and broke open the lock of the shed and fled with his sister.

The children asked around for directions and somehow managed to get to Siliguri Junction. They claimed that a travelling ticket inspector helped them board the Capital Express around 12 noon and they got off at Hasimara station.

“A hawker selling tea spotted us and asked us why we were standing all by ourselves. So we told him about our plight and gave him the phone number of a neighbour to inform our father,” Maya said.

The girl remembered the number because all their relatives and friends call on the neighbour’s phone.

The phone got through and the children’s father, a van-rickshaw driver, travelled 12km by bus to get to Hasimara.

“I am grateful to the hawker,” said the father, who had filed a report at the Madarihat police station on February 8 after the children went missing.

Alipurduar subdivisional police officer Mitesh Jain said the police had recorded the children’s statement and steps were being taken to bust the racket.