Four-Year-Old Found Alone on Salazie Roadside, Mother Arrested

A four-year-old girl was found abandoned on the side of a road in Salazie, in the mountainous interior of Mauritius, on the morning of Sunday 27 September — prompting a frantic rescue by her grandmother and a police investigation into child abandonment. The alarm was raised in an unlikely way. A 50-year-old woman was waiting for a bus in Pamplemousses, a town in the north of the island, when a stranger approached her with alarming news: her four-year-old granddaughter had been left alone on a roadside in Salazie, a rural district roughly 25 kilometres away in the island's central highlands. Unable to reach her 23-year-old daughter — the child's mother — by phone, the grandmother immediately hired a taxi and made her way to Salazie. When she arrived, she found the little girl waiting alone at the edge of the road, exactly as she had been told. The grandmother secured the child and went directly to Pamplemousses police station, where she filed an official complaint for child abandonment — a criminal offence under Mauritian law. **Mother traced and questioned** Investigators learned through the grandmother's statement that the young mother had been staying at a property in Brisée-Verdière, a locality in the east of the island. Police located and arrested her later that same evening. After being questioned, the 23-year-old was released but must remain available to authorities as the investigation continues. No charges had been formally laid at the time of reporting. The child was taken into the care of her grandmother while authorities work to find a longer-term solution for her welfare. **What this means** Child abandonment is treated seriously under Mauritian law, and cases involving very young children typically trigger involvement from social services alongside the police. The Child Protection Unit (CPU) — a specialist police unit — and the Ministry of Social Integration and Child Development may also become involved in assessing the child's situation and determining where she should be placed going forward. The case has drawn attention to child welfare safeguards in Mauritius, particularly in more isolated rural areas such as Salazie, where help can be harder to access quickly. Source: ION News