Boy plots kidnap story to meet Facebook lover

Enacting the drama of his kidnapping to be in Delhi with a girl he liked on Facebook almost got a teenager into trouble.On July 4, his parents had reported him kidnapped from a school on the Border Security Force (BSF) campus here after finding a note he had planted there.

Enacting the drama of his kidnapping to be in Delhi with a girl he liked on Facebook almost got a teenager into trouble.

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On Sunday, the local police brought Gopal Dubey, 19, back to his parents. On July 4, his parents had reported him kidnapped from a school on the Border Security Force (BSF) campus here after finding a note he had planted there. “Gopal had been courting this girl on the social networking website for six months, and desperate to reach her, he cooked up a story,” assistant commissioner of police Manpreet Singh said here on Monday.

A day before bringing his plan into action, Gopal allured one of the children playing in a park to write a line in Punjabi: “Pandit, chhotey nu bacha sakda hai te bacha lai (Pandit, save your child, if you can).” He placed the note in his school bag that he abandoned in the classroom, and next day sneaked out to Delhi.

Gopal had a mobile phone about which his parents didn’t know. On June 25, he made a call from it to his cousin in Bengaluru, which led the police to him eventually.

It was the cousin who noticed that Gopal used to text him in the past from the same number. He told his parents and when they called at the number, it was Gopal who answered but realising who was at other end, terminated the call. “Later, he pretended he was not Gopal but somebody speaking from Jammu,” said the ACP.

“The girl had got him a room in the neighbourhood and given him Rs 2,000 for daily needs. Secretly, she would also take food to Gopal. The police guided the teenager and brought him home.