Braveheart fought abductors, jumped off car

BENGALURU: A week after a woman was abducted from outside her house near Bellandur, police finally nabbed two of the kidnappers on Monday after opening fire at them. The arrested are Shankar (25) and Selva Kumar (30), both hail from Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu. Police said that the two worked as vegetable vendors in Dharmapuri and had borrowed a car to visit Bengaluru. The third accused, a driver, is still at large. Police sources said that the victim, a 28-year-old teacher, finally gave her statement on March 21. Narrating the horrific incident in her police statement, the victim said that she was walking outside her home on Kasavanahalli Main Road near Bellandur on March 18 when a car approached her.

There were three men in the car, all of them drunk. When the gang noticed the victim was walking without her slippers, they took her for a sex worker and asked for her sexual favours. When she tried to raise an alarm, the gang bundled her into their car and drove around the area.

It was half an hour of horror for the victim as she put up a fight against the men. She first kicked the driver and then the others. This angered the men, who then molested her. The victim finally managed to open the door and jumped out of the moving car. Thankfully, the men drove away at this point.The victim then picked herself up and walked to her uncle’s house nearby. She was, however, unable to give a police statement until March 21 as she was still in trauma, police said.

The hunt
A special team was formed to nab the accused and had been tracking the car movement. Around 3.45pm on Monday, Bellandur police were checking vehicles at a temporary checkpost when the two accused ran over the barricades. A team led by inspector Victor Simon gave them a chase and finally nabbed them near Kodathi BMTC quarters. The duo attacked police constable Mahantesh Mulawada with a knife, leaving him injured. This is when police Inspector Victor Simon opened fire first and then shot the duo in their legs. Three of them were rushed to a private hospital.

A police officer said, “Shankar and Selva Kumar stayed at their relatives’ houses in Tamil Nadu and Kerala respectively for five days when they came to know that police was looking for them. Police had gone to their native four days ago to nab them but they managed to escape. 

When police tracked down the car, the accused made a narrow escape in Kerala and reached Bengaluru on Sunday. The accused had borrowed the car one of their friends H Muniyappa, a businessman based in Dharmapuri. This is the first time the men are involved in any crime,” an officer said.Residents, who happened to notice the abduction on March 18, had alerted the police control room. Police then took a suo motu case on March 19 but the victim’s mother had then denied that her daughter had been abducted. She had said that the two had a fight and the victim left home after that.