Teen-led gang kills 2 boys for ransom

A gang of five led by a 19-year-old kidnapped and killed two boys and were planning to kill a third when they were caught on Monday.

A gang of five led by a 19-year-old kidnapped and killed two boys and were planning to kill a third when they were caught on Monday.

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According to the police, Rahul Gupta knew both victims as they lived in the same area in Vikaspuri, west Delhi and used to take the same bus to school before Gupta dropped out.

They kidnapped Yash Kumar (14), police said, and killed him. When his stockbroker father refused to pay the R1 crore ransom without first speaking to his son, they kidnapped Nikesh Kumar Singh (17), a former classmate of Gupta’s, killed him too and demanded R50 lakh from his father. The police said the gang had confessed to both murders and one of the bodies, of Nikesh, had been recovered.

“On September 10, Gupta lured Yash with a joyride and a cigarette to Kasganj in Uttar Pradesh. There, the gang strangled him to death. They then made the ransom call,” said a crime branch officer.

Gupta then chose another target. On September 30, he lured Nikesh to the same spot and the gang killed him too. On October 6, they made a ransom call to Nikesh’s father.

Neeraj Thakur, additional commissioner of police (crime), said that on October 9, Nikesh’s father paid the accused R2.5 lakh at Bareilly railway station without informing the police.

The cases were suspected to be linked and transferred to the crime branch. “We suspected the involvement of UP-based criminal Hari Singh (44). We laid a trap and arrested him and his four associates, including Gupta, from Anand Vihar bus terminal two days ago. They had assembled to hatch a conspiracy to kidnap a third boy from Vikaspuri,” said Thakur.