Man plans, kidnaps cousin, arrested

The Gurgaon Police on Monday arrested three people, including a married couple, and solved the kidnapping case of 10-year-old Vikas Gupta, the son of a bakery owner in Patel Nagar. Vikas, the class IV student of Sidheshwar Public School, was kidnapped on February 19 enroute to his tuition class.

The Gurgaon Police on Monday arrested three people, including a married couple, and solved the kidnapping case of 10-year-old Vikas Gupta, the son of a bakery owner in Patel Nagar. Vikas, the class IV student of Sidheshwar Public School, was kidnapped on February 19 enroute to his tuition class. The kidnappers had lured Vikas by saying that they would take him to see the movie My Name Is Khan at Ansal Plaza in Palam Vihar.

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It was through the mall’s CCTV footage that the police identified the kidnappers, who turned out to be acquainted to the victim’s family—one of them being Sharwan Kumar, the boy’s cousin. The other two, a husband-wife couple, earlier lived near the victim’s house.

Interestingly, while one of the kidnappers was negotiating with the boy’s father for the ransom, the boy, unaware of the goings-on, was watching the movie at the mall with his kidnappers.

According to DCP (Crime) Anil Dhawan, the boy’s cousin Sharwan had hatched the conspiracy to kidnap and ransom Vikas saying that his father could arrange money worth Rs 5-6 lakh.

Police officials say, H.N. Gupta, Vikas’s father, was asked to take the Rewari-Delhi passenger train and drop the bag near the Palam Vihar railway crossing after someone waved at him with a torch.

“A team of policemen in plain clothes boarded the train. When they saw someone waving a torch at Gupta, they pulled the train’s emergency chain. Gupta had not dropped the bag of money. As the train slowed, the police officials jumped off and caught the person. It turned out to be Sharwan, the boy’s cousin.”

Kumar told the police that Vikas was in the custody of the couple Irshad, alias Rahul, and his wife Bali, alias Anita, who had taken him to a movie hall. “However, when we reached the mall, the couple had let the boy go. The boy reached home at 11 pm. The family identified the two with the help of the mall’s CCTV footage,” Dhawan said.