BENGALURU: It was a scene straight out of a movie. A man waiting by a corner shop near Surya Layout, holding a gunny bag. A car was parked nearby. “It was around 7.15am,” a witness told the police.
As the man was carrying a gunny bag, others on the road assumed he was there to buy some items. Around 8am, as Mayank Patel walked down the road with his grandfather, Dahiyabhai, the man knocked the boy’s grandfather aside and pushed the boy into the car.
A few passersby who noticed the incident chased them for a distance and then gave up. The incident went by in a flash, but a few witnesses managed to pass on vital information to the police.
Street vendors who witnessed the incident managed to note down the vehicle’s number and gave it to the police. They immediately searched records and found the details of the vehicle. But police found that the kidnappers had stolen the number plate of another car parked in the area. The vehicle’s owner was unaware of this until police came knocking on his door, said a police source at K R Puram police station.
The source said that customers of the boy’s father, including carpenters at his timber shop, may have planned the kidnap to demand ransom.
A few locals too were detained for questioning. Police zeroed in on the kidnappers by tracking the mobile phones active in the area at the time of the incident, a police source said.