SHIVAMOGGA: Aspiring to become a Christian nun and serve society, a 20-year-old physiotherapy student staged her own kidnapping and attempted to extort a ransom of Rs 20 lakh from her parents to meet her expenses. The Shivamogga police found her in Hubballi, where she was waiting to board a bus to Mumbai. After counselling her, the police handed her over to her parents.
The young woman, Ranjitha, who is a student at a private college in the city, was missing since May 14. Her father received an SMS from Ranjitha’s phone stating that she would be killed if he failed to arrange a ransom of Rs 20 lakh. Police registered a case and launched an investigation.
They became suspicious when they discovered Ranjitha had withdrawn Rs 5,000 from an ATM before leaving Shivamogga. During interrogation, Ranjitha revealed that she had attended a Christian school in Nallur at Channagiri taluk in Davangere district and that she was inspired to serve the society by the nuns who taught her at the school.
She was admitted to a private college in Shivamogga for PUC and scored 90%. However, due to Covid-19, she could not secure a medical seat and enrolled in a nursing college to study physiotherapy. There, she met many Christian students from Kerala and decided to become a nun and work at a Catholic church in Mumbai.