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Loan recovery agents hijack bus with 34 on board
The bus, with 34 passengers left Gurugram for Panna in Madhya Pradesh at 3.20 pm on Tuesday. It entered Uttar Pradesh late in the evening.
The curious case of the bus that disappeared (or was hijacked) played out across Uttar Pradesh for around seven hours on Wednesday before ending safely around noon — the bus was found; no passengers were injured in the drama, and even the driver and the conductor were fine — but with many unanswered questions.
The bus was owned by Kalpana Travel agency, which, in turn, was owned by Ashok Arora, a resident of Gwalior, who, as it turns out, died on Monday due to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). Which leads to the first question: Did his death have anything to do with what happened to the bus?
The bus, with 34 passengers left Gurugram for Panna in Madhya Pradesh at 3.20 pm on Tuesday. It entered Uttar Pradesh late in the evening.
And then it gets confusing.
At around 10.30 pm, between Mathura and Agra, the bus was stopped, according to one account. Superintendent of police (West), Agra Rural, Ravi Kumar said that two vehicles blocked the bus; the driver, conductor and cleaner were deboarded, and a person from one of the cars that stopped the bus started driving the bus, with the passengers still on board towards Agra.
A passenger, Dharmendra Chaturvedi, gave a slightly different version. According to him, he were asked by the conductor to alight and board a different bus at Agra. He mentioned that there seemed to be an altercation but added that this seemed to involve only the conductor and the driver and some other people (who had not been on the bus) and that the passengers were not involved.
The driver of the bus , Ramesh Kumar, a resident of Dabra town in Gwalior district, gave a very different version: “About nine people were following the bus in two SUVs. When the bus reached Etawah toll plaza at about 2.30 am those in the SUVs intercepted the bus and told us that they were from a finance company. They gave ~300 each to me and the conductor of the bus and asked us to get down. They drove away in the bus .”
He added that he “later came to know” that the passengers were asked to deboard at Mauranipur in Jhansi district (Uttar Pradesh).
All of which leads to the second and third questions: what time did the incident happen? And were the passengers on the bus or off it when it was hijacked?
As for the driver, conductor and clear, according to SP Ravi Kumar, they were bundled in a car, driven through the night across various parts of Agra and finally dropped off at “Kuberpur in Agra rural”. He added that the “ accused returned the mobile phones and cash with conductor and driver” but not the ticket takings.
The driver and helper of bus finally reached Malpura police station at about 5.30 am on Wednesday and narrated the story to the police. It wasn’t immediately clear why they did not use their mobile phones to make a call.
The police swung into action when the news broke; the chief minister of the state, Yogi Adityanath, himself is believed to have taken an interest because the crime was initially seen as a hijacking — and it wasn’t clear that the pasengers were safe. The police of many districts went into high alert. They found the bus abandoned around noon near a dhaba in Etawah, just around 120 km from Agra.
The initial theory of the police was that this could be a case of repossession gone wrong involving a finance company .
That’s the message that was relayed to Madhya Pradesh Police too. “Chhatarpur Police got information from Agra
Police that a bus had been hijacked near a toll plaza between Agra and Mathura by a finance company. Passengers were made to board another bus and then the first bus which belongs to one Kalpana Travels was forcibly taken somewhere else,” said superintendent of police, Chhatarpur, Sachin Sharma.
But when they checked with the finance company, it denied all knowledge of the incident, according to the superintendent of police in Gwalior, Amit Sanghi.
Meanwhile, the UP Police caught a lucky break when the family of Ashok Arora identified one of the hijackers from CCTV footage at the toll plaza. His name was Pradeep Gupta. A moneylender, Gupta is believed to have had some dispute with Arora (it wasn’t clear whether he had loaned Arora money).
“Required legal action will be taken after initial investigations; the name of Pradeep Gupta has surfaced for being involved in the hijacking. Police is searching for him,” added Kumar.
But what of the passengers?
According to Dharmendra Chaturvedi, they shifted buses at Agra (when the incident happened), then Gwalior, then Jhansi, and finally reached their destination. He mentioned that at each location, they were directed to get onto a different bus. It wasn’t immediately clear who organised the remaining part of their journey, or whether their ticket money was refunded to them and they were asked to find their way home.
Chhatarpur SP Sharma added that all the passengers were safe (and were screened for Covid-19 on arrival).
