Patna, Jan. 5: The arrest of one Sunil Kumar in the alleged abduction of 16-year-old Saurabh Kumar has failed to provide police with much clues to crack the case.
“The number from which Saurabh’s family received the ransom call is registered in the name of Sunil Kumar. The police, through the mobile phone records and other technology, traced the number and he was arrested yesterday. Sunil, during interrogation said though the SIM card was registered in his name, he had passed on the number to his brother Ashutosh, who was using it. At present, the SIM card is not in Sunil’s possession,” a police officer said today.
Saurabh went missing from his residence at Road Number 21 of Gardanibagh on November 20. His family got a call for ransom of Rs 25 lakh the next day. Sunil, a resident of Rampur Tola of Barh, around 65km east of the state capital, was arrested yesterday. Sources said there could be a woman angle to the entire case too.
The police said the day Saurabh went missing, Ashutosh, too, fled with a girl to some undisclosed location.
“The case is quite confusing at the moment. The police have learnt that Ashutosh had eloped with a girl on the same day Saurabh disappeared. There could be two possibilities in the case now. First, Saurabh, who was known to Ashutosh, also fled along with them. Second, he too had a girlfriend and both the boys planned to elope together with their girlfriends. The call for ransom could be a trick to confuse everybody. But that does not mean we are not taking the call seriously. The case is being investigated from all angles,” the police officer said.
The Telegraph yesterday had revisited the story of Saurabh’s disappearance and the alleged apathetic attitude of the police officers concerned, who were not acting despite pleadings from the boy’s family.
On November 20, after Saurabh went missing, the family received a call the next day. The caller told the family that he had “purchased the boy for Rs 15 lakh and would release him only after the payment of Rs 25 lakh, the family members claimed.
