Hazaribagh, June 29: A family member of missing doctor K.P. Agarwal has admitted receiving anonymous ransom calls asking for Rs 60,000.
The needle of suspicion has turned to an inmate of Patna’s Beur jail, who made calls to the Agarwal family two days ago from a cellphone.
The doctor is believed to have been abducted on his way to Patna from Barhi on June 24.
Police sources said eight teams have been formed to identify the culprits. Officials are now in Patna to follow up the leads. Agarwal was travelling with his driver, Md Aslam, in a Wagon-R.
P.K. Agarwal, son-in-law of the kidnapped doctor, admitted receiving the calls a couple of days ago. The caller, he said, asked for Rs 60,000 for the safe release of the doctor. He spoke to the caller, as superintendent of police Anurag Gupta and had instructed him to.
After the police got to know about the calls, they tracked the number to Patna, sources said.
But the police are sceptical about the call and fear it was a trick to harass the family, as the ransom amount was too meagre in a high-profile abduction case as this.
Sources said the abductors have established contact with the family and were pressuring them to pay a hefty amount. Family members had earlier denied receiving any ransom calls.
The Indian Medical Association (IMA) has decided to launch an agitation tomorrow all over the state in protest against the suspected kidnapping of Agarwal and the alleged administrative high-handedness against Dr A.P. Singh at Nimdih.
IMA Ranchi president C.B. Sinha and secretary Ravi Shankar Das told reporters that all district units are being informed about the protest programme. “Besides the two, there have been many other incidents of attacks against doctors in the recent past. We are requesting the district units to join the programme to express solidarity with the doctors,” Das said.
Doctors all over the state will wear black badges while performing their duty from tomorrow. On July 2, an IMA delegation will meet chief minister Arjun Munda and hand them over a memorandum seeking redressal of their grievances.
“On that day we will give the government 72 hours to recover Agarwal failing which we will be free to take any extreme step for which the responsibility will be on the government,” he said.
