CHENNAI: In a scene straight out of pot-boilers, the city police nabbed a 26-year-old MBA student and son of a retired CRPF DSP for abducting a Class VI boy for a ransom of `50 lakh, near Avadi Hindu College Railway Station on Friday night.
The abductor was lured into the police net by Sukanthi, mother of Arvindhraj (11), the abducted child, as tutored by the cops.
Speaking to reporters, Sukanthi said she received a call seeking ransom for the child on Thursday around 4 pm when the child should have returned home by foot from school. She informed her husband Balaji, a manager in a construction company, and in turn preferred a police complaint.
Review of CCTV footage from the school showed that the 11-year-old boy had left the campus.
She received another call from the abductor who quizzed as to how much the family had and she replied that she could get only about Rs 2 lakh and that figure too will have to be collected from a contact in Tiruvanmiyur. Infuriated, the abductor told her to come to Central Railway station with whatever money she has by evening.
“I reached the Chennai Central Railway station and he asked me to purchase an open ticket to Arakonam and said he would guide as to where and when to deliver the money.
He asked me to get on to the last compartment of the train. When the train reached Hindu College Railway Station, he asked me to get down”, she said. “I walked the length of Hindu College Railway station thrice as police told me not to give the money away until I see my child. I told him I was exhausted and that he should bring my son to me to get the money”, she added.
The abductor then told her to climb the Road Over Bridge (ROB) near the sation. Since she refused initially, the abductor moved under the ROB and prompted her to come over the ROB. As she was on the ROB, the man asked her to look down and waved at her suggestively. The teams which were following the woman was lying in wait under the bridge and nabbed the abductor soon after she dropped the cash from the bridge. Then the boy, whose hands and legs tied and gagged, was recovered from a car in the vicinity of the station.
“We took a calculated risk and rescued the boy,” said Additional Commissioner V A Ravikumar.
The abductor was Bala aka Balamahendren (26) of Avadi. Having a BE degree from Nagpur, he is presently pursuing MBA from MIT Chennai. He stopped working from a production line in Sriperumbudur in 2012.
Asked as to how Bala chose the boy as a target, Ravikumar said Bala visited Imran, a former colleague who has migrated here from Nagpur and working as a supervisor in a constructional site in Madanandapuram near Porur, where the boy lives, on June 30. “Bala learnt about the boy’s family through Imran. The idea of kidnap germinated there and he executed the idea on July 2”, the official added.