Kidnapping drama ends, 2 booked for breach of peace

Kanpur: The ‘kidnapping’ drama involving a former L&T engineer ended on Thursday when the ‘victim’ Shivam Gupta and his alleged ‘kidnapper’ Suraj Soni reached the Naubasta police station on their own and were booked for breach of peace.
To recall, car-borne miscreants had ‘kidnapped’ the engineer from Naubasta area of the city on Tuesday. Satya Narain, a resident of Shyam Nagar area of Chakeri, had told police that his son Shivam, who had worked in L&T, Lucknow and had come to Kanpur to meet them a few days back was kidnapped. The kidnappers had made a ransom call from Fatehpur to free Shivam and the police had launched a massive search to trace the engineer.
“I suspected foul play since the very beginning as abductors always demand ransom in round figure. But, in this bizarre case, so-called kidnappers had demanded family members to pay a ransom of Rs 10.50 lakh,” Inspector Naubasta Samar Bahadur Yadav told TOI on Thursday.
The confusion ended after Shivam and Suraj arrived at the police station and started quarrelling over some monetary issue in front of the cops on Thursday. They were detained and questioned by the investigators. Suraj revealed that Shivam had cheated his cousin Anju to the tune of Rs 4.5 lakh after promising her lucrative job. As per Suraj, similarly Shivam had taken Rs 5 lakh from his friends Manish, promising him job in police department.
Shivam who rubbished Suraj’s allegations, later revealed before the police that he had quit L&T job a long time back and was working as a mine contractor in Hamirpur.
“Whether Shivam had taken money from Anju and Manish or not is a matter of investigation. If charges during investigation against Shivam would be found to be true, he will be booked under appropriate sections,” said Inspector Yadav.
“As of now, we have booked both Shivam and Suraj for disrupting peace of the area. Investigations are still underway in this regard,” he added.