A photo tagged on Facebook led the Delhi police to catch the kidnappers of a 21-year-old youth on Thursday.
A photo tagged on Facebook led the Delhi police to catch the kidnappers of a 21-year-old youth on Thursday.
The arrested kidnapper was identified as Yogesh Kumar, a law student of a private university in Ghaziabad. His other associates, Sushank Singh, Anuj, Kuldeep and Rohit, also study in the same university, are at large.
The police said that on May 1, all the accused in their cars entered Delhi from Ghaziabad to commit a snatching. They targeted a youth walking alone outside a mall in Anand Vihar area, but when they saw he appeared to be wealthy, they decided to abduct him at gunpoint. The frightened victim pleaded to his father not to call the cops but to pay the Rs 20 lakh his kidnappers were demanding. Hurried into a deadline of just four hours, Arjun’s father somehow negotiated the demand down to Rs 5 lakh and delivered the amount to the young men. After Arjun’s release, his family approached the police. “A special task force team led by inspector K.G. Tyagi got a vital clue when the victim claimed to have identified the scooter on which the abductors had gone to collect the ransom money,” said Rishi Pal, DCP (East).
“With the help of CCTV footage, the last four digits of the registration number of one of the vehicles used by the kidnappers was traced by the police. Then the police searched for the owner but he said he was clueless about the entire kidnapping incident. When the police searched the owner’s Facebook account and went through several status and photos tagged by him, the victim identified one of the kidnappers as he was tagged in a picture posted by the owner of the vehicle,” said a police official.
“We got a clue about the kidnappers and soon other kidnappers were also found in the friend lists of the owner’s Facebook account. After that raids were conducted at the respective houses and other hideouts of these suspects and one accused, Yogesh, was apprehended from ISBT Anand Vihar,” said a senior police official. The accused confessed that they had committed several snatchings in Delhi and after committing the crime, they would go back to their respective hostel and attend college. “We have recovered two cars and a scooty used in the kidnapping. They had distributed ransom amount among themselves. We have also recovered a iPhone 6S purchased by the accused from the ransom amount,” said a police official.
