Five held for kidnapping 13-yr-old boy in Kurla

Child kidnapped by aunt for money. (Representational Image)

Five persons have been arrested for allegedly kidnapping a 13-year-old boy in Kurla on Friday. While the accused, which included the boy’s maternal aunt, were looking for a shop that would provide them a SIM card without documents to make a ransom call, they were arrested on Sunday.

The accused have been identified as aunt Shanina Khan (27), Gufran Shaikh (26), Sohail Siddiqui alias Willaim (33), Jahangir Shaikh (28) and Sultan Khan (26).

After their arrest, the police’s Crime Branch team handed them over to the local Vinoba Bhave Nagar police station in Kurla (West). The families of the boy and the aunt resided in neighbouring buildings at Kohinoor area of Kurla (West).

Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Dilip Sawant said, “Five persons were arrested on Sunday for kidnapping a 13-year-old boy. The accused had not given him anything to eat for two days and also beat him up. We rescued him from the Shivaji Nagar area and handed him over to his parents.”

The police said Shanina Khan wanted money to repay a loan. “She worked as a part-time real estate agent and knew the other accused. Along with them, she hatched a plan to kidnap the boy’s younger brother and demand Rs 2 crore and then settle for Rs 50 lakh. Khan’s brother-in-law worked in an automobile company and was financially well off,” said Inspector Sandesh Revale.

“On Friday, Khan called up the boy’s mother and asked her to send her younger son down with the keys of her flat. Instead of the younger son, however, the older son was sent downstairs,” he added.

As soon as he came down, the four others, who were waiting nearby, put him in an auto-rickshaw belonging to Gufran Shaikh. The boy was taken to the tenement of Sohail Siddiqui in Shivaji Nagar. He was kept there for a few days before being moved to the office of Jahangir Shaikh.

“The accused then tried to procure a SIM card without submitting original documents to maintain anonymity. However, till Sunday they could not do so and we managed to arrest them. The boy had an injury mark on his finger. He was so scared that for two hours after being rescued, he could not speak,” Sawant said.

Apart from the five accused, the Crime Branch is on the lookout for another accused in the crime, said police.