VISAKHAPATNAM: The city police on Wednesday rescued an eight- month-old male child and arrested four kidnappers. The toddler was handed over to their parents at Kancharapalem police station.
The arrested have been identified as P Bhimshankar, K Sankar, E Vijay Kumar and N Durga Prasad.
According to sources, Natla Srinu, a vendor, was sleeping on the footpath of the Kancharapalem flyover along with his wife and five children. On May 18, around 2 am, his eight-month-old kid N Surya, who was sleeping close to his mother, went missing. After a futile search, he lodged a complaint with the Fifth Town police station the following morning.
Police said that T Mallesh and his wife Hemalata, native of Gurajala in Guntur district, who run a grocery shop in Kukkatapalle in Hyderabad, told their neighbour Bhimshankar to find a male child in Visakhapatnam for adoption as they failed to get one in Hyderabad.
Bhimshankar, immediately schemed a plan to abduct a child and told his friend Vasu who in turn sought help of his brother-in-law Kalla Shankar and his friends Eluru Vijay Kumar, the auto-rickshaw driver by profession, and N Durga Prasad.
As per the plan, they kidnapped the child and took him to Vijayawada in a taxi and handed over the baby to Mallesh and Hemlata and collected `1 lakh from them. When the couple sought a certificate, Bhimshankar told them that it would take two months.
Meanwhile, the police launched a search for the baby and on a tip-off, the acused were trapped all the accused at Convent Junction in the city and arrested them. They recovered ` 58,000 in cash, three mobile phones and seized an auto-rickshaw.