VISAKHAPATNAM: Nine-year-old K Damodar, who was kidnapped from Chintala Agraharam on the city outskirts Monday, is safe but his whereabouts still remain a mystery. Sources said that the police have taken into custody six persons from areas near Pendurthy and are questioning them.
In a new twist to the case, the kidnappers have sent the latest photographs of the boy but made no further communication with his parents till Friday evening.
Though the miscreants have set a deadline till 8.30 am Friday for sending the boy home alive, the police said that it has been confirmed that the boy has been kidnapped and that he is safe going by the photographs sent to the parents.
The kidnappers, who have been evading the police, once again made a call to Damodar’s parents from a coin box at a public telephone booth in the city limits around 1 pm and asked them to collect a white cover from the ‘hundi’ of Sri Saibaba temple at Vepagunta. The police who were alerted by the phone call, rushed to the temple and opened the ‘hundi’ only to find a white cover containing a memory card which had the latest photographs of the boy, sending the police into a tizzy.
Now that it has been confirmed that the boy has been kidnapped, the four police teams which have been deployed to trace the boy have upped their efforts to rescue him. Initially, the parents and the police assumed that the boy either went missing or ran away from home.