Couple, two others held for kidnapping engineer

Praveen Kumar | NT

Bengaluru, Jan. 23 A gang of four, including a couple, have been arrested for kidnapping a woman aerospace engineer from the Bommasandra-Jigani Outer Ring Road.

The victim hails from Haryana and was working for a private firm in the Jigani Industrial area. She was staying at a paying guest accommodation in Electronic City phase 1.

The arrested have been identified as Parthiban, 27, a techie, his wife Vasantha, her brother Ravichandran and their friend Mohammed Sulaiman.

The kidnapping happened on January 6. The main accused saw the victim riding slowly on her two-wheeler. He immediately hatched a plot to abduct her for ransom. He followed her in a car and stopped her en route. After getting down from the car, he told the victim that she had caused an accident to a pedestrian who had been hospitalized.

He told her to accompany him to the hospital as the pedestrian’s condition is critical. Blindly believing the unknown person, the victim got into his car when he reportedly kidnapped her.

However, before entering the car the victim had called her father to explain about the ‘accident’. He told her to send the location as he would be reaching there. But when he reached there, he saw her daughter’s two-wheeler parked on the road side.

In order to avoid getting tracked, the kidnappers had removed the victim’s SIM from her smartphone and put it in a feature phone.

After three to four hours, the father got a call on his mobile phone from the accused saying that they have kidnapped his daughter and he should pay Rs 50 lakh for her safe release.

He immediately filed a complaint with the Hebbagodi police near Electronic City. “After the matter was brought to the notice of police, around 200 police personnel attached to the Bengaluru rural district police were on the case. The accused kept calling the victim’s father asking him to keep the money ready and there were negotiations as the father told the kidnappers he could not arrange the money demanded by them. Finally the accused dropped the victim at some place after the sixth day of the kidnapping realizing that the police were behind them,” K. Vamsi Krishna, Superintendent of Police, Bengaluru rural police said.

Using strategic intelligence and combing, the police located the accused.