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Four debt-ridden men held for kidnapping, killing insurance agent for R25 lakh ransom
New Delhi: Four debt-ridden men were arrested for allegedly kidnapping a 57-year-old insurance agent, killing him after he refused to pay R25 lakh as ransom, and dumping his body in a canal in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr earlier this month, the police said on Thursday.
The decomposed body of the insurance agent, Deepak Dua, was found in Sikandrabad area, a few kilometers away from the spot where the suspects had thrown it into the canal after strangling him in a car.
The police identified the arrested suspects as Vinod Kumar, Sandeep, Monu Sharma and Sunny. The fifth suspect, Shiv, is still absconding. The Swift car used in the crime belonged to Shiv and is yet to be found. The four were previously involved in honey trap and betting cases, the police said.
Kumar planned the crime. While Kumar had a debt of R10 lakh, the others too owed many others between R5 lakh and R2 lakh after losing money in the illegal game, the police said.
An investigator said Kumar knew Dua for the past two years as he used to contact him regarding insurance policies. Since Dua was always dolled up, Kumar got an impression that he was rich and if kidnapped his family would pay a handsome ransom amount.
Additional commissioner of police (crime) Braja Kishore Singh said Kumar discussed Dua’s kidnapping plan with his associates. All of them agreed because they urgently needed money to pay off their debts. To execute their plan, they procured two SIM cards from Kosi Kalan in Uttar Pradesh on fake documents. Kumar contacted Dua and offered to purchase an insurance policy, said Singh.
On January 4, the additional CP said, Dua met the four men at Nangloi Metro station from where they took him to Dariyapur in outer Delhi. But later they dropped the kidnapping plan that day.
Two days later, Kumar asked Dua to come to Noida. Kumar and his three associates picked up Dua from a Metro station in a Swift car and held him hostage. They demanded R25 lakh for his safe release.
“Dua told them that he did not have that much of money and in fact offered R30,000 from his ATM card. His offer annoyed the abductors. They strangled Dua as they knew that leaving him alive will land them in police’s net. They drove to Bulandshahr and threw his body in a canal,” added Singh.
On January 7, Dua’s brother-in-law filed his missing complaint at Prashant Vihar police station after which a kidnapping case was registered. Ten days later, the Sikandrabad police informed about the recovery of Dua’s body.
“We analysed call details of Dua cellphone and zeroed in on the four suspects as their locations were found in the same area where Dua’s phone was last active. They were caught from Nangloi area on Wednesday,” the investigator said.