Upset over his 18-month-old son’s abduction, a man died of heart attack hours before police cracked the case and rescued the boy at Mailardevpally on Saturday.
The infant, Naga Chaitanya, was playing in front of his house at Vinayaknagar when a woman kidnapped him around 8.30 p.m. on Friday. An hour later, the boy’s parents approached the police and lodged a complaint stating that their kid was missing.
Registering a case of missing boy, the police started searching for the boy. Police patrolling teams inquired with residents of surrounding localities and alerted their network of informants distributing pictures of the boy.
Nagendra, father of the infant, was working as supervisor in a tyre company. He suffered paralysis in the past. He recovered subsequently but his speech got impaired.
“On Friday night, we went to Nagendra’s house and assured him that we’ll try our best to trace the kid. He was visibly upset but we convinced him that everyone is on the job,” Mailardevpally Inspector P. Jagadeeshwar said. Nagendra woke up in the early hours. Around 5 a.m., he had a cup of tea and was strolling outside when he suffered heart stroke and died.
Meanwhile, police teams continued the searches. The first clue came when a hotel owner said that he saw a woman carrying the boy after seeing the latter’s picture distributed by police in the area.
Further, a Home Guard collected video footage of a private surveillance camera. In the footage, an unidentified woman was seen standing on the road carrying the boy. By then, it was 11 a.m.
Investigators circulated pictures of the woman who was later identified as Kavitha.
Based on a tip-off, they picked up the woman who admitted to have abducted the child and sold it to a private company employee Rammohan for Rs. 20,000.
According to the Inspector, Rammohan had three daughters but no sons. At his instance, Kavitha abducted the boy and sold him to him. Both were arrested. The child was rescued from Rammohan’s house in Puranapool and handed over to its mother.
