VISAKHAPATNAM: Call it chance or luck, Vizianagaram district police on Saturday cracked a case of kidnap of a four-year-old boy 21 years ago and nabbed a woman. The police have reopened the case and are now on the job of tracing the victim, now 24.
A head constable of Jiyammavalasa police station, Rama Krishna, during investigation into a theft case, had a hunch that the woman, identified as Bhagyalakshmi, 38, was not speaking the truth about her criminal background. During interrogation, she spilled the beans about her role in the boy’s kidnap two decades ago. Ramakrishna was a constable when the kidnap case was registered in the Cheepurupalli police station.
The sensational case that was buried away in police files came to the fore recently when a person approached Jiyammavalasa police, stating that a woman had stolen valuables from his house after making his acquaintance and gaining his confidence.
Police immediately swung into action and took Bhagyalakshmi into custody while she was trying to flee.
When she was brought to the police station, Ramakrishna identified the woman as a resident of Cheepurupalli and she was the prime suspect in the boy’s kidnap case way back in 1998.
During questioning, when the police connected the dots and traced her antecedents to Cheepurupalli, Bhagyalakshmi confessed that she kidnapped the boy. “We had launched a search then but could not trace her. But, as luck would have it, we have cracked the case after 21 years,’’ a police official observed.
Bhagyalaskhmi was the suspect in the kidnap of Shankar Rao from his house in Cheepurupalli when he was four years, in 1998. Shankar Rao was the son of Suryanarayana and Pentamma. Bhagyalakshmi was their neighbour.
“She used to be very close to us and soon became a part of our family. Most of the time she used to be in our house as she was just around 17 or 18 years then. One day, she took away my brother right in front of all the family members and we did not suspect any foul play as she was like our family member,” said Shankar Rao’s sister Jyothi. The family grew suspicious only after she did not return till night.
During investigation, police found that Bhagyalakshmi fled to Hyderabad and went on to become a property offender. agyalakshmi gave contradictory versions about the whereabouts of Shankar Rao. Jyothi said that Bhagyalakshmi, at one stage, had claimed that she raised Shankar Rao only for a year and later his whereabouts were not known.
However, she later said that Shankar Rao was with her till he was 16 years of age but after that he got married and left her. Cheepurupalli police, who registered a case under crime no 19/1998 under Sections 454 and 380 of IPC, have reopened the case and are now on the job of tracing Shankar Rao.