Savitri Minz, a tribal girl from the boondocks of Orissa, had only one aspiration: to put her brother through school that she had been forced to quit. So, when her mother Mina, a widow who crushes stones to support her family of six, asked Gurudev, her son who passed the matriculation exams last year, to ?forget college and look for a job instead?, Savitri quietly steeled herself to go to Delhi ? a momentous decision that would change her life forever.

True, the 20-something girl, second of the five siblings, had for some time been toying with the idea ? her mother later learnt that from her friends ? of moving to the Capital to work as a maid to support her impoverished family, as several girls in Gyanpali, her village in Sundergarh district, have done over the last five years. But with hope of her brother going to college fast receding, she now felt compelled to take the decision, her mother feels.

?Of her four siblings, Savitri loved Gurudev very much. Whenever she had a little cash, she gave it to him. She wanted her brother to go to college even though we could not afford that,? the frail woman says, her voice barely audible over the clatter of a stone-crushing machine that drapes her with a cloak of dust at a limestone quarry at Lanjiberna.

Savitri was in Class II when unidentified assailants, for reasons unknown to the family, murdered her father Mayadhar Minz, a peasant. She had to drop out to take care of her siblings as her mother went out for the first time ? to work at the quarry.

Mina Minz returned home one evening last June to find Savitri missing. None of the siblings had any idea where she had gone. Frantic, she went to see the mother of Bimla Minz, a local girl working as a maid in Delhi, and was told she had already left for Delhi with Bimla, who had come to Gyanpali for a tribal festival. ?They told me not to worry as a man from a neighbouring village, working as a dalal in Delhi, was involved,? the mother says.

She was heart-broken as Savitri was ?the most sensible of my children?. ?She was responsible and even-tempered. She took care of her siblings, did the cooking and took care of the household as I remained away at the quarry all day,? the mother says.

Ten months on, as the mother begun to wonder what had happened to her daughter, a team of policemen from Rajgangpur barged into her home on February 1. She was told her daughter had ?kidnapped? Arpit Dewan, a 18-month-old son of a working couple in New Delhi, an accusation she found hard to believe. Four days later, she was told ? this time by the villagers ? that her daughter had come to Rajgangpur on her way home with the child and that she was arrested.

?It?s all so confusing. Why would my daughter abduct the child and then try to come home with him?? the mother asks, incredulous. ?I don?t know why she did that.?

The mother never got to meet her; Savitri, arrested as she got off a bus, was taken back to Delhi before she could reach home. But something tells the mother that her daughter is ?not guilty?.

Her mother, who earns Rs 50 a day, does not know how to scrape together the money needed to get her daughter out on bail. Desperate, she turned to a sahukar, a village moneylender, but was turned down.

Even the local police are not convinced that it?s ?a real case? of abduction. According to R.N. Barik, inspector-in-charge of the Rajgangpur police station, who arrested and questioned the girl, Savitri told him she had told the placement agency repeatedly that she wanted to go home, but they had paid no attention to her. Most important, he says there was ?no demand for ransom?. ?A kidnapper hardly comes home with the hostage. It doesn?t seem to add up,? the police officer says.

Social activists feel that the girl herself could be a victim of a racket run by the so-called placement agencies in Delhi with the help of local brokers. ?If the placement agency had accepted her requests to come back and made arrangements, this incident would not have happened,? says Bijay Kumar Soreng, principal of Gangpur College of Social Work, working with the Adivasi Vikas Manch to stop exploitation of migrant workers in the area.

The fact that the girl stole about Rs 300 from the house of the Diwans, her employer, to buy train and bus tickets for Orissa points to the fact that she had no money with her. ?I doubt if she had been paid during her first employment with another family,? Soreng says.

The Dewans, husband Arvind and wife Bharti, say the placement agency they got Savitri through asked them not to pay her on a monthly basis, but annually at the rate of Rs 1,500 a month.

Meanwhile, all four placement agencies in Chirag Dilli, a downmarket area in the Capital where these agencies operated without licence, have pulled down their signs and shutters, fearing police action. The closed agencies include Vineeta, from where the Diwans had hired Savitri.

But such action means nothing to the thunderstruck tribal family at Gyanpali, a village of some 45 houses without a tar road, electricity or a health centre. Innocent or not, Savitri had abducted the child, at least ?technically?, police say. She has been booked under section 363 and 381 of the Indian Penal Code for abduction and theft. Each charge carries a sentence of up to seven years in jail.

Savitri?s dream of ?getting her brother educated one day? may remain a dream.