NEW DELHI: A seven-year-old boy was kidnapped from the house of a businessman in Shahdara district on Tuesday. Police rescued the child from Gokulpuri metro station and arrested the accused, the house help, who had demanded a ransom of Rs 1.1 crore for the release of the boy.
Sagar Preet Hooda, joint commissioner (eastern range), said on Wednesday that police received a phone call around 5.39pm on Tuesday about a boy missing from Subhash Mohalla in Gandhi Nagar. The child's mother also disclosed to police that the suspect, Monu, had been recently re-hired after he had earlier left their employment because the boy had grown fond of him and was crying for him.
DCP (Shahdara) R Sathiyasundaram said that around 4pm on Tuesday, Monu took the boy to play, duly informing the mother. “But when they didn’t return home after one hour, the mother called Monu only to find his phone switched off,” revealed Sathiyasundaram.
When Monu later made a ransom call to the family, police formed teams from four police stations, including even personnel from the special staff and auto theft division among them, under the overall supervision of Jitendra Kumar Meena, additional DCP-1 (Shahdara). The men were deployed in civil clothes near railway stations, metro stations, bus terminals and check posts. “The teams also scoured parks, isolated, abandoned buildings and parking lots,” an officer said.
Monu called again and was told by the boy’s father that they could only pay Rs 10 lakh. “Monu told them that he wanted Rs 1 crore. He warned that he would switch off his phone in the next one hour," the officer revealed.
Around 8.30pm, one of the teams spotted the boy and the accused near Gokulpuri metro station, around 5km from the kidnap site. “The suspect was waiting there hoping that the family would arrange the ransom money and meet him,” the officer said. Monu was apprehended and the child rescued safely within three hours of the kidnapping.
Police said Monu, a native of UP, came to Delhi a few years ago and, on the recommendation of a woman named Ruby, began working at the complainant’s house around a month ago. “He was under the impression that the boy’s father earned a lot of money running a mineral water plant and other businesses," the police officer said.
To make a quick buck, he decided the misadventure that has cost him his freedom. “The accused confessed that he was planning to buy a flat in Mumbai with the ransom money. He had worked as a decorator in Mumbai a few years ago," said the officer. After taking the child outside, Monu had bundled him into a rickshaw, then an auto and later an e-rickshaw to reach the Gokulpuri metro station.
