A nine-year-old girl, who was abducted by a man from near her house at Banaswadi on Saturday, was rescued from the clutches of the kidnapper at V. Kota in Andhra Pradesh and reunited with her family on Sunday night.
Though the kidnapper was caught by the rescuers, he managed to give them the slip.
Nikita (9), a class III student, was returning from a nearby shop when an unidentified man lured her on the pretext of buying a sari for her mother and asked her to come with him so that he could send it across with her.
An unsuspecting Nikita went along with him and they reached K.R. Puram from where they boarded a bus to V. Kota. When Nikita asked him where they were going, he reportedly threatened to kill her and told her to just listen to him.
“The man tutored her to call her dad and threatened not to reveal anything to anyone,” a police official said.
Fearing him, Nikita obliged and the duo reached V. Kota and slept in the bus-stop without food. The next day, the kidnapper took her to an isolated house on the roadside, where he asked Nikita to wait as he had to relieve himself.
When Nikita started crying, three men, who were on their way to Bangalore in a car, saw the girl crying inconsolably.
Sensing something amiss, they approached Nikita, who initially said she was with her father. Further questioning revealed that Nikita was from Bangalore and her father’s name is Srinivasa from Banaswadi.
The trio nabbed the kidnapper and thrashed him before bundling him into the car and drove towards Bangalore, to hand him over to the police. However, the kidnapper, who requested them to stop as he wanted to relieve himself, managed to escape, the police said. The trio managed to reach Banaswadi and handed over Nikita to her parents on Sunday night. The trio later went to the police station and gave the details to the personnel there.
“I do not know how to thank them. I was so happy to see my daughter. I could not even thank the people, who brought my daughter back to me, properly,” Mr. Srinivasa, a cab driver working for an IT company, said.
The Banaswadi police, who have taken up a kidnap case, are on the hunt for the accused. “The people who rescued the Nikita have provided us with some clues and handed over his jacket and mobile phone. Based on this, we will track him soon, police official said.
Mr. Srinivasa told the police that the accused has been identified as Pradeep from V. Kota.
