A 14-year-old boy, Y. Manidhar, escaped from the clutches of his abductors in filmi style by biting off the ropes he was tied with at Medchal on city outskirts on Saturday.
While the boy’s family members were elated over his safe return, investigators were clueless about the kidnappers. “We are continuing the hunt for them,” Petbasheerabad ACP A. Srinivasa Rao said.
Son of steel and cement trader Giribabu, the body lives in Medchal. He started for his Nagarjuna school on a bi-cycle. En route, his friend joined him.
While they were a couple of kilometres away from the school, three persons drove in a car. They stopped by the boys and called Manidhar. While the other boy left, Manidhar went to them to find out why they called him.
“Leading the boy to believe that they were his father's friends, the strangers asked him to sit in the car and sped away once he got inside it,” the ACP said. They took him to an abandoned stone crushing unit near Puduru, nearly four kilometres away from where he was abducted.
They tied him with a thin rope and put him in a tin-shed room. Later, the kidnappers rang up Giridhar and demanded a ransom of ₹10 lakh to secure his son’s release. They threatened to kill the boy if their demand was not met.
“The abductors spoke Telugu. We suspect they were known to Giribabu's family,” the investigators said. Around 4 p.m., the boy tried to wriggle out and started biting the rope with which his hands were tied.
He managed to snap the rope finally and came out of the room. The abductors were not there when he escaped, the police said. With the help of a passer-by, the boy contacted his family members who rushed there along with the police.