CHENNAI: Nearly four-and-half years after a 13-year-old school boy was kidnapped by two youth at Mogappair and rescued after paying nearly `1 crore as ransom, a Chengalpattu trial court on Thursday convicted the two men and sentenced them for life terms.
The sensational kidnap was reported by the media as the kidnappers - K Prabhu and R Vijay Kumar - were educated in foreign universities and their kidnap was done to perfection.
According to the prosecution, the victim, Keerthi-vasan, then 13 , had stepped out of his school in Mogappair on November 1, 2010 when he was kidnapped in a car by the two men who threatened the boy’s driver, Govinda Samy. For the next three days, Prabhu and Vijay managed to keep the boy in their custody in a car and were roaming around. The boy was finally rescued after his father Ramesh, a textile mill owner, paid nearly `1 crore to them. Both the kidnappers, of Anna Nagar (West), were arrested the same day by a special police team that was closely following the case.
Much to the shock of police, Vijay, then 26 years old, was found to be an MBA graduate from a university in London. Prabhu, 28 years old then, was a BE graduate who had worked in a well-paid job in Singapore. They allegedly kidnapped the boy to get easy money for a luxurious life later.
The JJ Nagar police booked both the accused under seven IPC sections, including kidnapping, and filed the charge sheet in a trial court at Tiruvallur.
The trial was transferred to Chengalpattu principal district sessions court in 2012 on directions of the Madras High Court on a petition by the counsel of the accused that the boy’s father Ramesh, being a business man, could influence the trial.
After a prolonged trial, the Principal district sessions judge P Rajamanickam on Thursday pronounced that the prosecution had proved beyond doubt that both Vijay and Prabhu kidnapped the child and kept him in custody for three days.
“The child’s statement played a crucial role in the trial. The court pronounced both of them guilty under IPC section 364A (kidnap for ransom) and 506(ii) (criminal intimidation). Both were given life sentences on kidnap charges and a two-year jail term for criminal intimidation,” the public prosecutor K Arumugam told Express.
However, they were acquitted on other IPC sections 363, 386, 465, 468 and 471 as there were no incriminating evidences to support the charges.