London, May 19 (PTI): Four illegal immigrants from India, including a woman, have been sentenced to jail terms ranging from three-and-a-half to 12 years on charges of kidnapping an 11-year-old boy and demanding a ransom of ?40,000 from his family.

Judge Richard Matheson at the Middlesex guildhall crown court yesterday sentenced 23-year-old Ravideep Babu for 12 years in prison and ordered that he be deported to India at the end of his sentence.

The boy was on his way home from school in March last year when he was grabbed by Babu, bundled into a car and held in a squalid room in London for 26 hours. At one stage Babu shoved a telephone into the child’s face so that the boy could plead to his father.