Kolhapur: Three held for demanding Rs 25 lakh ransom, killing youth

KOLHAPUR: The Satara police have arrested three suspects for allegedly kidnapping and murdering a 17-year-old youth from Ashte village for extorting Rs 25 lakh.
The suspects have been identified as Aashish Bansi Salunkhe, 19, Sahil Rustum Shikalgar, 25, both residents of Nagthane in Satara district, and Shubham, alias Sonya Sambhaji Jadhav, 30, a resident of Molacha Odha. They were produced before a local court and remanded in seven-day police custody. A case is registered with Borgaon police station, Karad.
Inspector Sarjerao Patil, in-charge of local crime branch, Satara, said, “On the evening of December 11, 2019, Tejas Jadhav left home to go to the local gym but did not return home. His parents searched for him and late in the night, found his motorcycle lying on a road near a temple in village.”
The next day, his father lodged missing complaint with the local police. As the region is hilly, the police used drones and other methods to look for Tejas but could not trace him. They searched through the call detail record of his mobile phone but could not get any leads.
“On February 17, Tejas’s father received a call from an unknown person, who told him that he had kidnapped Tejas and demanded ransom of Rs 25 lakh to release him. The father immediately contacted us and we traced the caller and nabbed him on Friday. We also nabbed two other suspects involved in the crime,” Patil said.
“During interrogation, the trio confessed to kidnapping Tejas on December 11 and murdering him on the same night. They had tied the body to a cement pipe and iron rods and dumped it into a nearby well to ensure that it did not float. We recovered the body, which was in highly decomposed. The medical officers have done the post-mortem and we are awaiting the report,” Patil said.
Patil added that the suspects had confessed to strangulating Tejas to death by tightening a cloth around his neck. “Tejas’s father had sold some agricultural land and had earned money through the transaction. The trio were aware of this and planned to kidnap Tejas to extort money from his father. We are investigating the case in detail,” he said.
— With inputs from Atul Deshpande in Satara