Bettiah: A leather shoe trader feared kidnapped from Motihari was reunited with his family on Tuesday, which police said was a disturbing trend of fake abduction cases in East Champaran and West Champaran districts.

Closely preceded by the kidnapping of a seven-year-old Prince Kumar for ransom in East Champaran, the rise in hoax kidnappings have come as crick in the police neck.

Identified as Mohammad Naushad Hussain, a leather shoe trader went missing on March 18, prompting family members to start a search. Later, they found a handwritten note at the trader's shop, asking his family members to pay a ransom of Rs 5 lakh for Hussain's safe release.

However, it all turned out to be a hoax.

"In the course of investigation, we came to know that Hussain was in debt and fled to his relative's place in Uttar Pradesh to make it look like an abduction," said Motihari police station officer-in-charge Anand Kumar, adding that further investigation in the case is on.

Motihari superintendent of police Upendra Kumar Sharma, however, attributed the rise in such incidents to media fascination for crime reporting in detail.

"Such in-depth reports on TV channels are fair enough to make one aware of a criminal's modus operandi," he said, citing the examples of school-going students' involvement in Prince Kumar's kidnapping and murder case recently.

Echoing similar sentiments, Upendra Kumar's Bettiah counterpart, Jayant Kant, said: "It is not difficult for police to judge the magnitude. Tone and tenor tells the tale. Such cases would be dealt."

On March 7, a Class X student, Shubhum, left for the coaching classes and didn't return home owing to the fear of getting reprimanded by his father for his failure in class test. He reunited with his family on March 8.

In similar incidents, two students - Priyanshu Mishra and Roshan Kumar - both residents of Motihari, disappeared from their houses on February 2 and 23 respectively on being pressurised for study but were reunited with their families later, prompting the police to investigate into the cases from various possible angles. On January 23, a madarsa student, Mohammad Saidullah, disappeared from Nautan in West Champaran district, triggering a dramatic police search by police before it turned out to be a faux pas again.

The boy came back the next day.