Chandigarh, April 2: Punjab police today claimed to have solved the case of 18-year-old Prabir Singh?s abduction from Amritsar on February 7 with the arrest of nine persons.
Prabir, the son of a billionaire businessman, was abducted in his Honda Accord and set free after 11 days on February 18.
?We have cracked the case with the arrest of nine persons. One woman, Maninder Kaur, wife of an accused, Kulwant Singh, fled to the UK on a visitor?s visa with her son on February 21. We would be approaching the CBI for her deportation,? director general of police S.S. Virk said here today.
Admitting that Prabir?s father had paid a ransom of Rs 1.25 crore for his son?s release, Virk said the police had recovered Rs 50 lakh from the abductors of the Plus 2 student. ?The only amount that we have not been able to lay our hands on is Rs 35 lakh that was transferred to the UK and has been traced to Maninder.?
Responding to a question in the Assembly on Wednesday, chief minister Amarinder Singh said the state had witnessed more than one kidnapping case a day during the last three years.
Punjab witnessed 608 cases of kidnapping in 2002 and 500 in 2003, he added. Last year, 508 such cases were registered while 74 abductions had been reported till March 10 this year. The revelations have shocked parents of school-going children.
The DGP said Prabir?s family, who had been in touch with the kidnappers through private channels, had negotiated the teenager?s release.
?They had taken money from various banks to give (the ransom) to the kidnappers. The main accused who plotted and conducted the kidnapping, Kulwant and Sukhjit, a dismissed constable with a crime record, have also been arrested. Interrogation has revealed that they had links with criminals all over the country and were even planning a similar abduction in Jaipur,? he added.
Police sources said while Sukhjit wanted a political career and was keen to contest the Assembly polls in 2005, Kulwant had been funding politicians of various parties in Punjab.
A police officer connected with the investigation said the gang members had tried to mislead the police by linking themselves with gangsters in Uttar Pradesh.
?But we kept getting closer to them. Even when the ransom was handed to them we did not make a move as Prabir was not released immediately but after six hours in Fatehgarh Sahib and not Saharanpur,? the officer revealed.
?We had to do a lot of leg work to crack the case. We studied records of criminal gangs in the area, their modus operandi and their links. We even kept a close watch on former terrorists and former police constables with criminal records. We even sent teams to various states,? Virk said.
