BENGALURU: The Government Railway Police (GRP) rescued a 17-year-old boy, who reached Bengaluru by train from Ahmedabad, from the clutches of a three-member gang, including his WhatsApp friend, on December 16. The gang had demanded a ransom of ` 5 lakh from his father and managed to get `40,000 after kidnapping him on December 11.
According to Superintendent of GRP, SK Soumyalatha, “The teenager travelled by train No. 16507 (Jodhpur to Bengaluru) in connection with a job in Bengaluru. A person who befriended him via WhatsApp, Prabhat, a dropout from an engineering college, convinced him to alight at Chikkabanavara, promising that he will get him a good job. He met him there with two others and took the boy with him.”They later shot a video of him, forcing him to say that that he had taken the camera of one of them.
He was forced to request his father, a native of Bihar, to pay `5 lakh to the trio. “A sum of `40,000 was paid by the family on December 13. The group then called the family again on December 15 and demanded more money. The father came to Bengaluru and filed an FIR at Yesvantpur railway station the same day,” she said.
The trio had been shifting the boy to the houses of their acquaintances in various districts and even took him to a lodge in Nelamangala for a few days, the SP said. GRP tracked the kidnappers’ number to which the PhonePe payment was made and located it. The boy was rescued on December 16 from Nidagundi railway station, and one of the kidnappers was arrested. The other two, Ranganath (18) a first-year degree student at a college in Kunigal, and Kushal (18) a resident of Kunigal, were arrested, and an FIR was filed under various sections.