PUNE: A tip-off about a sports utility vehicle (SUV) used for kidnapping a businessman and its occupants demanding a ransom of Rs 3 lakh helped the
Kondhwa police solve the case and arrest one of the suspects on Tuesday.
Police identified him as Rohan Ramchandra Salunkhe, a supplier of agricultural pipes, from
Uruli Kanchan in Pune rural.
Salunkhe and seven of his friends walked into a workshop-cum-shop of Sunil Bhagwati Prasad Tiwari (31) at Shiv Pratisthan Chowk in Sainagar in Kondhwa at 5pm on Saturday, saying that it was a 'raid'.
The suspects accused Tiwari, a native of
Uttar Pradesh, of selling adulterated butter to pav bhaji vendors. They demanded Rs 3 lakh to settle the matter and threatened him with dire consequences, but he refused to give in to their demand.
According to police, the suspects pushed Tiwari into an SUV and drove him Dhankawdi, Upper Indiranagar and Katraj. They demanded Rs 50,000 and forcibly took Rs 35,000 from him before dropping him to his workshop around 6pm and sped away.
Tiwari was so afraid that he did not report the matter to police. When his neighbour advised him to lodge an FIR, he registered a complaint against the unidentified men on Tuesday night following which investigations began.
Tiwari's complaint was lodged under sections 363 (kidnapping), 386 (extortion by putting a person under fear of death) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.
Kondhwa police station's senior inspector
Milind Gaikwad said, "The breakthrough came when we received a vehicle registration number of the SUV from an informant. We traced the address of the vehicle owner and contacted him for details. The owner, during questioning, informed us of lending the SUV to his nephew Salunkhe, two days before the kidnapping."
"We took Salunkhe into custody. He told us he had visited the workshop at the behest of his friends. We are interrogating him to establish the identity of the other suspects,"
Gaikwad added.
