Devakumar, a 12-year old harmonium learner from Sai Mandir area in Kalaburagi, got into trouble on Sunday evening when he decided to help strangers who pretended to be in medical urgency and asked him to lead them to a nearby hospital in the city. While his friend, Shashikanth, who was also returning with him from music class, refused to help, he stepped into the strangers’ auto and started leading the driver to Dhanvantari Hospital. Within minutes, he realised that he had been kidnapped.
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After a while, his parents received a phone call from Shashikanth’s mother who told them what had happened in the evening. His anxious parents spent the whole night and next morning searching for him. They got no clues. Lakshmi, the boy’s mother, fell unconscious and landed in a hospital.
Rajashekhar, the boy’s father, received phone calls from kidnappers who demanded a ransom of Rs. 20 lakh for the safe release of his son. He immediately approached the police.
Superintendent of Police N. Shashikumar convened an emergency meeting of senior officers and formed eight teams to track down the boy.
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The kidnappers called 50 times from one number and around 40 times from another. On demand, they allowed Rajashekhar to speak to his son over the phone. They initially gave three days’ time for arranging the money and later reduced it to two days. After suspecting police movement, they asked Rajashekhar to arrange money on the same day.
Citing demonetisation of high value currency notes, Rajashekhar expressed his helplessness to arrange such a huge ransom money in valid and tenderable notes within a short period. The kidnappers showed their readiness to accept a part of ransom in Rs. 500 or Rs. 1,000 notes. Rajashekhar managed to mobilise Rs. 2 lakh in Rs. 500 notes by Monday evening.
The kidnappers who were frequently changing their locations directed Rajashekhar, who carried the ransom, from one place to other, before finally leading him to the sparsely populated Kapanur Industrial Area. Plain-cloth sleuths, informers and some members of the public were active in all those areas where the kidnappers were calling from and where Rajashekhar was asked to come. Another team was following the ransom amount.
Boy injured
The collective and coordinated efforts yielded results. The police encircled and caught the kidnappers who were later identified as Sridhar (20), Vinod (19), Vijay (19) and Trimurthy (19) at Kapanur Industrial Area at about 11 p.m. on Monday and also rescued the boy who was injured with knives and threatened with strangulation.
In the interrogation, the accused confessed to have committed the crime for repaying their loans of about Rs. 5 lakh.
“In order to threaten the parents, the kidnappers had claimed to have committed many murders. We however found no previous criminal records of the accused. Of the accused, one is a PUC student and the other three have no work,” said Mr. Shashikumar at a press conference on Tuesday. The accused, with no particular target, randomly picked up the boy, and got the information about the his father’s profession as a FDA clerk and their posh locality of residence. The police chief commended the coordinated action of 40 police personnel, informers and public involved in the operation.
Lakshmi regained consciousness when the operation was in the final stage and later joined her son.