Hoax kidnap call lands three in jail

hyderabad: salesman of a private firm and two his friends, who enacted a kidnap drama to fleece money from his aunt, were arrested by the saifabad police on sunday. according to saifabad inspector a venkataratnam, aliuddin who works as a sales representative for hindustan lever along with his friends, asif, a manager in tata finance, and mahesh, hatched a plan to cheat his aunt,anees khayyum, who stays in saifabad.anees khayyum's children live abroad. according to plan, mahesh called up anees khayyum on november 16, saying that they kidnapped aliuddin and demanded rs five lakh as ransom for his release. later aliuddin also called up his aunt and pleaded with her to comply with the demands of kidnappers, lest they will kill him. an agitated anees immediately lodged a complaint with saifabad police.the police installed a caller identification instrument to the telephone in her house to trace the source of the call. the police move yielded results as they identified the call from the kidnappers on the evening of november 16 threatening anees that they would kill aliuddin if ransom was not paid immediately as coming from an std booth in malkajgiri. enquiries revealed that a couple of youth arrived at the std booth twice in the day and made phone calls. the police laid a dragnet around the area and when mahesh and aliuddin came to make a phone call, both were held. after some hard questioning, the youth narrated their plans to the police. all the three youth were arrested. the case was supervised by saifabad acp a shankaraiah and dcp umesh sharaf.