A woman abducted from Maheshtala in South 24-Parganas five months ago was rescued in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura on Friday after police tracked down her location with the help of the SIM card that she had retained keeping her abductors in the dark.

Raju Kumar Singh, the woman's elder brother-in-law, has been arrested for his alleged role in facilitating the abduction.

Police said the 23-year-old’s phone had two SIM cards when she was kidnapped. Her abductors had asked her to destroy the SIMs but she managed to retain one.

Investigators tracked her down after the woman exchanged messages with a friend, who was among the few who knew the second number and dropped a message a month back.

Senior officers of the Diamond Harbour police district refused to reveal from where in Mathura the woman was rescued, saying more arrests were likely.

On Saturday, the woman recorded her statement before a magistrate under Section 164 of the Indian Penal Code. The police later handed her to her parents, who live in Ranaghat in Nadia.

The woman, who has a two-year-old child, was abducted moments after she had stepped out of her in-laws’ house in Maheshtala on a February afternoon. She told the police that she was stopped by a few men in a car, who asked her to read an address on a piece of paper for them.

While she was reading out the address, the abductors allegedly pulled her in and injected something into her. She immediately passed out.

The woman’s in-laws informed her parents that their daughter had gone missing. Her parents reached Maheshtala from Ranaghat and lodged a missing diary with the police.

“She was carrying two SIM cards. The abductors wanted her to destroy both but she managed to retain one. But it did not have any balance left,” said an officer.

In June, one of her friends, who were among the few who knew the number, sent her a message. When the woman didn't respond, she called her.

“The woman answered the call and asked the friend to top up the card. The conversation lasted less than a minute. The woman told her friend the two would be in touch only through messages,” said a senior officer of Maheshtala police station.

That was in June; four months after the woman had gone missing.

Once the friend learnt that the woman was held up somewhere in Mathura, she alerted the police, triggering a search based on her mobile location.

A police team left for Uttar Pradesh, while another monitored the woman’s tower location till the members of the other team rescued her.

“We came to know during our investigation that the woman's elder brother-in-law had facilitated her abduction by tipping off the abductors after she had stepped out," the officer said. “An inter-state racket could be at work. We need some time to unearth it.”