BENGALURU: No one knows where Sujay SK is - neither his parents, nor the police. The resident of Cambridge Layout, Halasur, whose software firm folded up almost immediately after he set it up, has been through three abductions and a suicide attempt.
The case has left the city cops baffled. The 23-year-old entrepreneur from Chennai was allegedly kidnapped by eight employees thrice in a span of five days, between March 21 and 26, 2019, for failing to pay their salaries for three months. They reportedly assaulted him each time, and then released him.
A depressed Sujay went home after the last abduction on March 26, and consumed an overdose of sleeping pills. He was taken to a private hospital, where Halasur police took his statement, in which he mentioned the abductions and assault by his employees.
Based on this, Halasur police arrested three of the accused employees — Sanjay (23), Niranjan (25) and Rakesh (23). Five others, including a woman, all in their 20s — Nikith, Rashmi, Vishwa, Tanzeem and Darshan — are absconding.
In a strange twist to the tale, Sujay, after his discharge from hospital on April 7, again went missing on Monday (April 8). His father Shivam C, a former Army man, filed a ‘missing person’ case.
Interestingly, Sujay’s parents refused to share details of their relatives or friends whose houses he usually visited. Sujay, too, gave police a wrong mobile number.
The police now suspect that the five absconding employees may have abducted him for the fourth time, in another bid to get their salaries. Police are also exploring the possibility that Sujay may have left home depressed, as his parents had reportedly scolded him for trying to end his life.
Police have launched a manhunt for him as well as the five other accused, to rule out any possibility of a fourth abduction. A police officer said that Sujay, along with a few friends, had opened the private company, FGL Infotech, in Kudlu, near Electronics City. He had completed his diploma in engineering, and come to Bengaluru from Chennai.
Eight employees had joined the company in January 2019, but it shut down within a month due to management issues. The employees started demanding payment of three months’ salary, and when Sujay started avoiding them, they allegedly planned to kidnap him.
He alleged that each of the three times he was abducted, he was assaulted with an iron rod. The abductions and his financial state led him to kill himself.
