A two-member gang kidnapped the 14-year-old son of an MNC executive from the plush Manyata Residency gated community in northern Bengaluru.
The boy's father, who is a director at the MNC that makes photocopying machines, paid the ransom of Rs 15 lakh but later contacted the police, who nabbed the kidnappers after a 20-day hunt. One of the culprits had landscaped the family's house eight months ago.
The events unfolded like scenes from a thriller movie.
The class 9 boy was sleeping in a ground-floor bedroom of the family's duplex villa when the kidnappers sneaked in through an unlocked sliding door in the early hours of September 2. His parents were sleeping on the first floor and there was no security guard who could stop them.
Flashing a knife, the kidnappers threatened to kill the boy if he made any noise. They took away his mobile phone and asked him to get the keys to his father's Hyundai Creta that was parked at the house. As the boy complied, they forced him into the car and drove off to Dobbspet, Tumakuru Road. This was around 4 am.
The kidnappers held the boy captive and got him to call his father. They spoke to the father and demanded Rs 15 lakh to release him unharmed. They warned him against going to the police.
The father panicked and accepted the kidnappers' demands. On their instructions, he headed to the railway tracks in Dobbspet, kept the money there and left the place.
After getting the money, the kidnappers released the boy around 2 pm that day. The father filed a complaint at the Sampigehalli police station.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Northeast) Anoop Shetty formed a special team under Rangappa T, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Sampigehalli subdivision), to trace the kidnappers but it was not an easy task.
Kidnappers' trail
The first obstacle was the absence of CCTV cameras at the family's house. Police had to scour the CCTV footage of Embassy Manyata Business Park and phone tower data to find the kidnappers' trail. They discovered that the kidnappers had gone towards Tumakuru Road.
It took police inspector K T Nagaraju and his team about 20 days to track down the suspects: Suneel Kumar M alias Suneel Raj, 23, and Nagesh Y V, 22, from Gudibande and Mandikal, Chikkaballapur district, respectively.
Police recovered an SUV, Rs 9.69 lakh in cash, a KTM motorcycle and a camera. The motorcycle and camera were bought with the ransom money.
Suneel worked for a lawn and landscaping firm and completed a degree course at an evening college. The boy's family hired him eight months ago to landscape their house. While working there, he learnt the family was very well-off. So he hatched a plot to kidnap the boy for ransom and roped in his friend Nagesh, who is a farmer in Mandikal.