The city police were led on a wild goose chase by a 14-year-old student who faked his own kidnapping to avoid appearing for an exam at his coaching centre.
Police said the teen initially tried to defer the exam by making a threatening call to the owner of the coaching centre, and when that failed, cooked up a story about being abducted.
According to the police, the boy’s family members approached Dadar police station on Saturday morning with the complaint that he had been kidnapped by unidentified men on Friday evening and was later released with an intimidating message for the owner of his coaching class.
In his his statement to the police, the teen said he was on his way to the coaching centre in Dadar on Friday when unidentified men accosted him around 4 pm and forced him into a car near Shardashram school.
“They threatened to kill me, and also told me to tell sir (the coaching class owner) to shut down the classes. They said the plan had been to kidnap another student but ended up abducting me due to mistaken identity. They let me go near Naigaon,” he had claimed in his statement.
In his statement, the coaching class owner said an unidentified caller had threatened him with dire consequences if he did not shut the classes down. This led the police to initially believe the teenager’s story. The boy, however, had not provided any details about the kidnappers’ identity apart from saying that Gujarati music was being played in the car.
When the police traced the threatening caller’s number, they realised it was registered in the name of the boy’s friend. Smelling a rat, police called this friend in for questioning. The boy claimed he had lost his cell phone a day before the call was made.
The police once again quizzed the teenager, but this time, they subjected him to rapid-fire questioning. “It was during this that the boy let slip that he had spoken to his friend on the latter’s cell phone the day the threatening call was made,” said PI Uttam Rokde with Dadar police station. Soon, the plot hatched by the teen duo unravelled and the boy confessed to the police officers.
After consulting superior officials, the police decided to not take legal action against the boy and allowed him to go home on Saturday evening with a warning.
The writer is an intern at The Hindu
He said he was forced into a car by unidentified men on Friday while on his way to tuition classes
