Close on the heels of Hebbal police rescuing a kidnapped seven-year-old boy, Upparpet police on Saturday rescued a six-year-old girl from her captor within 24 hours of the kidnap.

A special team of Bangalore City police handed over Neev Jain alias Neev Sedhia to her father, Jayanthilal Sedhia, a cloth merchant in Upparpet, on Saturday afternoon. Police arrested Raju Arjun Biraskale (22), a resident of Hubli on charges of abducting a child.

According to the police, Raju’s parents were doctors and were heavy drinkers. They died a few years ago. He too was a heavy drinker.

He worked for somtime at the house of a former MLA in Hubli and got married six months ago. Of late, he had been facing a severe financial crisis.

“He wanted to get rich quickly and planned to kidnap a child for ransom,” DCP (West) K V Sharath Chandra said.
He came to Bangalore three days back and happened to meet M Raju, an autorickshaw driver carrying children from Sindhi School, near Kumara Park.

Raju told the driver one of his relatives was trying to seek admission for his child at the school. He asked the driver to pick up and drop the child every day once the admission formalities were over.

Raju said he was staying in a lodge at Kapali Galli. He told the driver he could not walk and asked auto driver to take him to the lodge. When the driver took Raju there, the latter abducted Neev and took her to Tumkur in a KSRTC bus.

He called Jayanthilal from an STD booth and demanded Rs 10 lakh as ransom.

Later, he went to Chitradurga and again made the ransom call to Neev’s father.

Jayanthilal alerted the police, who formed two special teams. One team left for Tumkur and the other to Chitradurga. The team found Raju in front of an STD booth near Chitradurga bus stand and surrounded him. They freed Neev and arrested Raju.