New Delhi, Jan13: An incident of mere miracle it can be said of 20-year-old Mridul alias Manu Bhalla of Shahgarh, Sagar, who is recovering at Indore’s Bombay Hospital after he was kidnapped 5 days ago, had his head smashed with a stone, trussed up and thrown into a 500 feet deep gorge near Indore, but luckily found alive on Friday.

Mridul, a BCA student was kidnapped on January 7 from Indore. Initially, police did not take it seriously when Saurabh his roommate with whom he shared a rented apartment, along his friends approached the police on Monday, but when Mridul’s father Mohit Bhalla, who came down from his hometown a day later approached the police, they took up the case seriously.

Tracking down phone calls and several CCTV footage, police arrested two teenagers, in their early twenties, Akash Ratnakar and his two accomplices Rohit alias Piyush and Vijay. During the interrogation, Akash confessed that he got furious with Mridul after he thought Mridul was trying to woo his girlfriend who lived close to their rented apartment. Akash said he also felt the two were chatting till late in the night.

Later, in the pretext of meeting the girls’ uncle, Akash took Mridul out in his brother’s car on Sunday morning and drove him to the nearby jungles of Muara Ghat on the Pedmi-Udainagar road, some 35 km from Indore. Akash along with his accomplices overpowered Mridul, smashed his head with a stone, tied him up and then thinking that he was dead, threw him into a deep gorge.

The doctors treating to Mridul confirm it as a pure case of miracle as he was found five days later with his pulse rate down to 46 while suffering from hypothermia and his body nearly running out of glucose.