On July 24, the parents received a call from an unknown number. But their concerns gave way to relief when, instead of a kidnapper, they heard the voice of the two teenaged girls on the other end.

Turned out, the girls had run away from their home after performing poorly in Maths and Science in internal examinations, police said. They were in Mumbai when they made the call to their parents after running out of money, police added.

Describing the sequence of events, ACP H M Kansagra of ‘B’ Division, who was supervising the search operation, told The Indian Express, “The girls had planned ahead and had each carried a pair of casual clothing in their school bags. After they left school, they went to a nearby public washroom and changed out of their school uniforms. They then went to Geeta Mandir bus stand and caught a bus to Surat because they could not find any means of transport to Mumbai.”

After reaching Surat, the girls sat in a train headed to Mumbai. A few hours later, they got off the train at Churchgate station.

“However, since they had used up the limited amount of money that they had saved for the trip, they spent the night at the railway station,” said ACP Kansagra.

The teenagers – who did not have mobile phones – took the help of a local resident in Mumbai to contact their parents. The parents then informed the police about the location of the girls.

The local police in Mumbai tracked them down and brought them to the police station concerned.

A team from Navrangpura police station in Ahmedabad was dispatched to Mumbai on Friday and they brought the teenagers back to Ahmedabad and reunited them with their families.

“We asked the girls what had actually happened… it appears that they had decided to run away from home fearing that they would score poor marks in an internal examination, especially because they are weak in Maths and Science,” said ACP Kansagra.