Four men who identified themselves as loan recovery agents of a private finance company hijacked a bus with 34 passengers from a highway in Agra early on Wednesday after the owner of the vehicle who had allegedly defaulted on EMIs died of Covid-19 in Madhya Pradesh.

Around four-and-a-half hours after the 6am hijack, it emerged that the passengers had reached Jhansi in another bus the hijackers had packed them into after driving them for around 20km.

The bus, owned by the family of the now-deceased Ashok Arora of Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, was found parked around 1pm near a dhaba in Uttar Pradesh’s Etawah, over 100km from New South Bypass in Agra from where it was hijacked. Nobody was in the bus and the hijackers are still at large.

Arora’s family said they had no EMI dues. Police said they were also probing an extortion angle as the Aroras, the owners of Kalpana Travels, had allegedly been receiving threat calls demanding money.

The bus had been travelling from Gurgaon in Haryana to Panna in Madhya Pradesh when it was chased down by the four men in an SUV, the police said. The driver, Ramesh Kumar, had initially ignored calls from the men to stop the bus but soon the hijackers caught up.

The police said three of the hijackers entered the bus, forced the driver, conductor and helper to get off and sped away with the vehicle. The other hijacker followed the bus in the SUV.

“They forced me, conductor Ram Vishal and cleaner Bhura Singh to get off the bus. Then one of them took the driver’s seat and drove away while the two others sat along with the passengers. Their remaining team member followed the bus in the SUV,” the police quoted Ramesh as saying.

Ramesh filed a written complaint at the local Malpura police station around 7am.

Around 10.30am, the 34 passengers were found safe at a bus terminus in Jhansi, where they told the staff that the hijackers had driven them for around 20km and then herded them into another bus. “The hijackers asked us to make our own travel arrangements to Panna from Jhansi,” the police quoted one of the passengers as saying.

Bablu Kumar, the senior superintendent of police of Agra, said: “We have registered a case against four persons for the crime and are trying to arrest them.”

As the four men had been wearing masks because of the pandemic, it could be difficult to identify them, police sources said.

Ramesh, the driver, told reporters in Agra that the hijackers were saying that the bus owner had not been paying EMIs and so they had come to seize it.

Pawan Arora, the son of bus owner Ashok, said they had no EMIs left to pay.

“My father died of Covid-19 five days ago. The whole family is in isolation. The bus is in the name of my mother, Deepa Arora. We owe no money to any finance agency. We don’t know who did all this and why,” Pawan said.

A police source said: “We have come to know that somebody had been trying to extort money from the Aroras. We are probing all possible aspects.”

Hijacker nabbed

Agra police arrested the main accused Pradeep Gupta in the early hours of Thursday from the Fatehabad area of Agra district.

Pradeep suffered a bullet injury to his leg in the encounter that followed after the police intercepted him.

“The main accused of the bus ‘hijacking’ case Pradeep Gupta has been arrested after an encounter with the police. He was on his motorcycle and was traced in Fatehabad area of Agra district in the early hours of Thursday,” said Babloo Kumar, SSP Agra.

Gupta was taken for medical assistance for injury in his leg. The CCTV footage helped identify him at the toll plaza on Wednesday as he led the ‘hijacking’ of the bus.