ive persons were arrested on Monday in connection with the mysterious abduction of Snapdeal executive Dipti Sarna, with police saying that the prime accused was a Bollywood-inspired “psychopath” who had been tracking her for around a year and wanted to win her heart.
SSP Dharmendra Singh, who had earlier indicated possible contradictions in the woman’s version, has now given her a clean chit and called her version right.
The prime accused has as many as 30 cases registered against him. He escaped from police custody in Sonepat during a court hearing in June 2014. Around seven months later he saw Dipti with a male friend at the Rajiv Chowk Metro Station and fell in love with her, the official said.
“The accused was inspired by Bollywood movie Darr , in which Shahrukh Khan’s character is obsessed with a woman. Also, the accused read Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ in jail and was inspired by the relationship between Hitler and Eva Braun. He also drew inspiration from the life and struggle of Genghis Khan,” the official added.
The accused reportedly started tracking Dipti’s movements and soon bought two auto-rickshaws to execute his plans of abducting her. He tried to do so several times but failed as Dipti, who got off the metro at Ghaziabad’s Vaishali station, preferred taking shared autos in which a few women were seated, SSP Singh said.
On February 10, he and his associates managed to puncture the autorickshaw in which Dipti and some others were travelling. He then intercepted the vehicle with his own auto, in which three of the co-accused were present, and convinced the driver of the punctured vehicle to shift the passengers, of which three were women (including Dipti), to his vehicle, the official said.
There were two vacant seats in the autorickshaw, which Dipti and another woman decided to take. Once they were on their way, the accused men pulled out a knife and threatened the other woman asking her to step out. After she obliged, they blindfolded Dipti, pointed a gun at her and headed towards an undisclosed location, the official said.
On their way, the autorickshaw in which Dipti was being taken broke down. The main accused was following her in a car. After the auto-rickshaw broke down, the accused dumped her mobile phone (which the police are yet to recover) and backpack behind an under-construction bungalow.
“The accused is a psychopath. The motive behind the crime could not be cracked. He had not disclosed the motive to any of the co-accused. To some he said that the woman they were to abduct was a hawala operator and could fetch them crores, while he told the others that he needed men to thrash a person,” the senior official said.
The main accused made Dipti sit in his car and headed towards his native village. On the way, his vehicle ran out of gas for which he borrowed his cousin’s car and continued the journey towards a village in UP’s Baghpat. Dipti was held captive for a night, during which the prime accused did his best to convince her that he did not want to hurt her and it were his co-accused who had actually abducted her.
He played the ‘hero’ and kept telling Dipti that it was her male friend (who he often saw with her) who wanted to kill her relatives, the senior official said.
The next morning, the prime accused took Dipti to a railway station and made her sit on a train headed towards Delhi. By then Dipti was convinced that he was her saviour. In fact, even during her interaction with the SSP (Ghaziabad) she requested him not to take any action against the man, who later turned out to be the main accused.
Dipti then borrowed a co-passenger’s phone and called up her father, who picked her up later. “The accused have to be interrogated for further details,” the official added. — PTI
The prime accused, who has 30 cases registered against him, escaped from custody in 2014
