Man gets life term for kidnapping ex-employer’s son

Man sentenced to life for kidnapping ex-employer's son for ransom. Court calls offense detrimental to society. Accused convicted under section 364A.

MUMBAI: The sessions court on Thursday sentenced a 32-year-old man to life imprisonment for kidnapping his ex-employer’s 11-year-old son from Khetwadi in 2016 and threatening to kill the child if he was not paid ₹5 lakh.

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“On evaluating the whole attending circumstances and the unfortunate factual niceties, this court is of the view that the proved offence against the accused is certainly a detriment for society,” said additional sessions judge AA Joglekar while pronouncing the judgement and imposing a fine of ₹5,000 on the accused.

According to the prosecution, at around 8pm on February 17, 2016, Chandrakumar Bhansali, the complainant and father of Kalp Bhansali, received a call from his sister-in-law informing him that his son had not returned home. When Chandrakumar rushed home, he learned that his sister-in-law had asked the child to get milk from a nearby store around 6pm and then pick-up his 4-year-old cousin from a tuition class. He was also supposed to pick a notebook from a friend’s house before returning home.

Chandrakumar checked with the owner of the milk shop, the tuition teacher and Kalp’s friends, but everyone said he had left long back. He and his brother then rushed to the VP Nagar police station to file a complaint.

At around 10pm, when Chandrakumar was lodging the complaint, his brother received a phone call from an unknown number; the caller demanded ₹5 lakh as ransom and threatened to kill Kalp if the family failed to pay him. While the police traced the call to Kamathipura, when the person called back ten minutes later, Chandrakumar’s brother identified him as Rajendra Harijan, who used to work in the family’s shop.

In his testimony before the court, Kalp narrated how he was kidnapped by Harijan. “I stopped at the corner of my lane for ice gola. It was around 6.45 p.m. At that time Rajendra uncle met me. I know him as he worked at our shop. He told me to go with him to bring chocolate boxes from the shop. Thereafter, I went with him, with the articles – milk and chatni. He took me by walking for around 3-4 hours. The place where I reached looked like a jungle,”

The public prosecutor Anand Sukhdeve, seeking punishment in accordance with the gravity of the crime, submitted that not only had the prosecution proved the involvement of Harijan in the crime but also claimed to have proved the spot of incident.

The advocate representing Harijan criticised the prosecution and accused them of failing to examine crucial witnesses and establish the chain of events beyond reasonable doubt. He claimed that the accused was falsely implicated on account of prior animosity wherein a sum of ₹1,20,000 was to be paid to him.

The court, however, refused to accept the defence and convicted Harijan for committing offences punishable under section 364A (kidnapping for ransom) of the Indian Penal Code.

As regards discrepancies pointed out by the defence lawyer, the court said, “A typical commoner is not blessed with trained eyes to have exact recollection of things as the witnesses observed. A lot depends upon what people see and perceive about an incident and what they narrate subsequently – the rendition might not be accurate describing the sequence or events of facts completely,” the court said, adding that object of sections like 364A is the curtailment of such barbaric and inhuman acts, especially concerning minors.