A father and daughter have been arrested for allegedly kidnapping a seven-year-old, police said.
Uttam Das and daughter Manisha kidnapped the child to recover Rs 1.5 lakh that the child’s father owed them, an officer said.
Officers of Muchipara police station in north Kolkata received a complaint on Monday that a seven-year-old from Kalyani, Nadia district, had been kidnapped from near Sealdah station last week and her family had been receiving ransom calls.
On tracking the phone numbers from where the purported ransom calls were made, the police found that the alleged kidnappers were in Kalyani, too, not far from the child’s family.
Cops said they found during the investigation that the child’s father had taken a Rs 1.5-lakh loan from a neighbour and allegedly failed to repay it. The neighbour and his daughter allegedly plotted to kidnap the child to recover the amount.
“The child’s father would often go missing following multiple visits from debtors. He went missing from home last week. One of his neighbours, Uttam Das, went to his house and told his wife that her husband had been spotted near Sealdah station,” said an officer. “When she went to the station with her seven-year-old child, accompanied by Das and his 23-year-old daughter, the latter managed to lure the child into her lap with a packet of chips. Then she vanished into the railway station crowd.”
The child’s mother lodged a police complaint accusing Das and his daughter of abduction and demanding ransom.
Early on Tuesday, a team of officers from Kolkata arrested Das, 47, and his daughter Manisha, 23, from their Ananda Nagar home in Kalyani and rescued the child from a building not far from their home.
The police said it was apparent that the father and daughter had kidnapped the child to recover their money. “But this is not the right way to recover money. If they had any complaint against the man for not returning the money, they should have lodged a police complaint for cheating. But kidnapping is a serious offence,” said a senior police officer.
The charge of kidnapping for ransom under section 364A of the Indian Penal Code, if proved before the court could lead to a maximum punishment of 14 years in jail.