Police rescued two teenagers onboard Howrah-Mumbai Duronto Express in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, and arrested a young man who was allegedly taking the two to Mumbai with the lure of jobs in Bollywood.

The girls are from Baduria in North 24-Parganas, about 50km from Calcutta.

The police said the two were missing since July 27 and the parents had lodged a diary with Baduria police station a day after.

Within hours of the complaint, the police reached the house of a young man of the same village, who the girls often spoke to. The man’s family told the police he had left for Mumbai in the morning.

“By the time we learnt he would be taking the Howrah-Mumbai Duronto, it was late in the afternoon. The train had already left Howrah station,” said a senior officer of Baduria police station. “We collected a photograph of one of the teenagers and got in touch with GRP after drawing up a specific case.”

At Howrah station, officers from GRP told the district police that after Tatanagar, the train’s next stop would be Bilaspur junction. That would be around 6pm. The details of the case and the photograph of one of the teenagers were immediately forwarded to GRP officers in Bilaspur.

“While speaking to the GRP team in Bilaspur we gave them an exact description of how the two teens were dressed based on what their parents told us,” the officer said. “The train had a stoppage time of 10 minutes at Bilaspur is all we knew.”

Armed with a team of lady officers, GRP scanned the train when it chugged into the Bilaspur station and finally spotted the two teenagers and arrested the youth.

A team of officers from Baduria left for Bilaspur later and brought the three back on Wednesday. The youth has told the police that he worked as a painter in Mumbai and was taking the two for a guided tour of the country’s economic capital.