The odd behaviour of a neighbour, who stopped taking his pet dog for usual morning walks, helped the Rachakonda police crack the kidnap of a minor boy and rescue him.
The Malkajgiri Police, along with the Special Operations Teams (SOT), formed eight teams to probe the kidnap of the 13-year-old, who was rescued on Saturday morning from Palakurthi in Warangal. Though the gang denied intending to harm the boy, officials seized knives, plastic ropes and handcuffs from them.
Rachakonda Commissioner D.S. Chauhan said that the mastermind behind the kidnap was Sunkesula Shiva, 22, who has been planning the mission for a month and teamed up with his cousin Sunkesula Ravi, 24, his friends Katukoori Dilip and Pasika Mahipal, and a 17-year-old juvenile from the locality.
“Shiva and Ravi incurred a loss of ₹4 lakh in online trading and hatched a plan to kidnap the son of a realtor Rupineni Srinivas. The 13-year-old boy was studying in Class VIII and lived in an adjacent house. As per plan, they teamed up with Dilip and Mahipal and further lured a juvenile to do their bidding,” said police. “By using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to conceal their location, they made calls asking for a ransom of ₹2 crore and warned the realtor to stay away from the police and the media if he wants to see his son alive,” said the Commissioner.
Sources said that the juvenile was the son of a suspended Sub-Inspector from the Railway Protection Force (RPF), who was offered ₹20 lakh out of the ransom. The gang also made the realtor take back the missing complaint initially made by him and further asked for proof of the same, which the police facilitated for the sake of the boy’s safety.
Explaining how the case was cracked, DCP of Malkajgiri and Bhongir SOT R. Giridhar said that the probe had initially hit a roadblock with possible suspects having an alibi. “However, we always had a hunch that the accused had to be a known person. We then noticed Ravi roaming around the house in a suspicious manner without stopping his vehicle to check police movements and also that he stopped taking his dog out for walks,” said the official.
On Friday morning, when the officials went to inquire, Ravi was found hiding under a bed in the house. “After misleading us with the location and the motive, he finally confessed and shared the plan. Based on his statement, the local police in Warangal were alerted and we rescued the boy. They had waited two days to find the victim by himself and finally lured him to their car with the help of the juvenile on June 15,” added the DCP.
