'Victim' held for staging kidnap drama

LUCKNOW: It was kidnap drama. The ''victim'' was real. The ransom call to his father was also real. The ''victim'' is now free but the drama has ended on a sad note for him. For, he himself was the kidnapper. He was arrested.
It all began on January 31 when Abhinav Kumar Pandey (15) left his Alambagh residence to attend regular classes at Lucknow Public Inter College off Jail Road but did not return home till late in the evening.
Around 8:30 in the evening, the Pandeys received a ransom call demanding Rs 5 lakh in exchange of safe release of their son. Where and how the money had to be delivered, was to be intimated the next afternoon by 1 pm. Senior superintendent of police (SSP) Lucknow Navneet Sikera said that on February 1, instead of 1 pm, the kidnappers called at 9:30 am and after a few warnings, hung up promising to call back again by 4 pm. However, instead of 4 pm, the call came around 7:30 pm. This time the kidnapper was angry:
"You don''t want your son back or what?" he threatened. After another round of negotiations, he, however, reduced the demand to Rs 1 lakh. "Yeh paisa Amit ko de dena aur usko bolna ki Kanpur road ki taraf bag mein paisa lekar chalna shuru kare. Main raaste mein usse paisa lekar tumahara ladka ho chord dunga" (You give this money to Amit and ask him to walk towards Kanpur. I will take the money from him and then let your son go). Circle Officer (CO) Alambagh IPS (under training) Sachi Ghildyal told TOI that around 8:30 pm the ''kidnapper'' called up again asking why the ransom had not been paid yet. When informed that Amit, a teacher at Kota Matrix - a coaching institute which Abhinav attended, had refused to help, the kidnapper called him up and threatened him as well, said Sachi - who supervised the operation herself.
By the time the next call came through, the police were ready. The phone calls of the kidnappers were tapped. This led the police teams to a series of PCOs between the railway station and bus-stand at Colelctorganj crossing in Kanpur. On Wednesday night, when the next call was made, the call was traced to Kanpur and a team of cops sent to keep a watch at the other end. The team nabbed one of the ''kidnappers'' red handed while he was still busy threatening the Pandeys over phone. What came as shocker for the police was the revelation that the kidnappers were in fact only one male. It was none other that the ''victim'' Abhinav. Police, after collecting and verifying all information that Abhinav provided about his gameplan, lodged a case for leading the police on a wild goose chase. He was thereafter released on bail, the CO revealed.