Ranchi, Sept. 23: Two teenagers and a youth, who got abducted on September 5 from Ranchi when they left home for a joyride without informing their parents, were recovered today from Saranda forest following a joint operation by Ranchi police and their counterparts in Chaibasa (West Singhbhum).

Around a dozen criminals involved in the abduction, some from within the city and others hailing from outside Jharkhand, are learnt to have been nabbed. They are being questioned at different undisclosed locations in Ranchi, police sources said.

None in Ranchi police wanted to divulge much about the way they cracked the case till the interrogations were over.

The father of one of the victims confirmed the recovery to this paper.

On September 5 (Wednesday) afternoon, Chutia resident Shivam Singh (16) took his father Madan's car and left for a joyride with his friends Gaurav Singh (15) and Shanky (23) around 1.30pm without informing his parents.

When the three didn't return home, Madan filed a case in Chutia police station on September 6 after failing to contact them on their mobiles that were switched off.

Around 8am on September 6, the car in which they left home, was found abandoned by the police on Ring Road under Nagri police station on the outskirts of the capital.

'It was a dead end for us as the car didn't give us any clue. There weren't any eyewitnesses either,' an official of Chutia police station said.

Shedding light on the way they went about the case, he said the top brass of Ranchi police set up around four teams with different briefings.

'As the mobile phones of the three victims were switched off, we tried to trace other phones that remained active around the place where the car was found. Other teams were engaged in tracking the activities of some of the notorious groups through informers. Meanwhile, Madan received a few ransom calls from a couple of unknown numbers whose locations kept on changing. After monitoring those calls for days, we could zero in on a few suspicious numbers active in Saranda forest,' he said.

Another officer of Ranchi police said a team visited a few places in Bihar and Bengal following a tip-off, but that didn't yield much success.

He said ransom was the motive behind the abduction.

Chutia police station OC B.K. Bharati said a formal news meet was expected in a couple of days.

Talking to The Telegraph over phone, Madan said his son and his two friends arrived at 8.15am today morning.

'We left with the police last night for Saranda (Goielkera) from Ranchi and a special operation was launched in the deep jungles around midnight. The boys were not allowed to take bath all these days and were tied with iron chains in the jungle. They were only fed rice and dal,' he said, hailing the police's efforts in handling the case sensitively..

' Shabd nahi hai police ki tariff ke liye. Unhone sensitivity se is case pe kaam kiya. Hume sabse bada Puja gift de diya. (I don't have words to praise the police for the way they have handled the case so sensitively. We got the biggest Puja gift),' he said.

He said the parents should take lessons from such incidents and keep a watchful eye on what the kids do.