Within 24 hours of receiving information, the Tiruvannamalai police rescued a couple belonging to Telangana after they were reportedly lured by two persons and taken in a car to a few parts of Tamil Nadu.
The four persons were handed over to the Telangana police on Saturday.
At 9 a.m. on Friday, R. Ponni, Superintendent of Police, Tiruvannamalai, received information from the friends of the couple Jagadish Kandi, 45, of Kondapurand his wife Kiran Kandi, 40. They were taken by two persons – Srikanth Reddy and Usha Srinammi – in their car to a few temples in Tamil Nadu and money was extorted from them.
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Police said the couple, who spoke to friends, asked for ₹10 lakh and informed that they were in Srirangam and were going to a Siva temple in Chennai.
When the issue was reported to the SP, they were tracked in Tiruvannamalai through the cell phone tower location.
The SP formed a team headed by Assistant SP Ravali Priya Gandhapuneni, comprising inspectors N. Venkatesan (Tiruvannamalai Town) and Murugan (Tiruvannamalai East) and a few sub-inspectors.
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“We received their photographs on WhatsApp and tracked the cell phone signals. We traced them to Mada Veedhi in Tiruvannamalai,” Mr. Venkatesan said.
Mr. Kandi and his wife were working in the IT sector. Nearly a month-and-a-half ago, they approached Srikanth Reddy and Usha Srinammi, who were running a yoga centre at Madhapur to attend yoga classes, he said.
The police said the duo made the couple drug addicts.
“They took them in their car and left Madhapur on the evening of July 2. They had taken them to Tiruvanmiyur in Chennai and then to Srirangam.
On the way, they had stripped them of their clothes under the pretext of conducting ‘pooja’ and again took them in the car. They reached Tiruvannamalai on July 6 and were going around the town,” he said.
On finding them missing, Mr. Kandi’s brother-in-law lodged a complaint with the Madhapur police on July 5.