Guwahati, Oct. 17: A happy end to a child kidnapping drama that was played out in the Assam capital over three days has been spoiled by the realisation that the villain of the piece was a youth from the hostage’s family.
Seven-year-old Aneesh Giri, the son of city-based wheat mill owner Arun Giri, was reunited with his parents today after almost 72 hours of separation when a police team traced him to a house at Lalmati in Basistha. The shrieks of joy at the Giri residence were, however, tempered by the news that Aneesh’s cousin Biswajit, 21, was with the boy when the police found him.
“He is the prime suspect and we have arrested him,” a member of the investigation team said. That the child had been kidnapped was confirmed only yesterday, when his family received a telephone call from a man who claimed to be a member of the militant National Democratic Front of Boroland. He demanded Rs 20 lakh in return for Aneesh’s freedom.
The police, who were initially unsure about whether Aneesh had been kidnapped, swung into action the moment the ransom call was reported. “Our investigations yielded clues almost immediately and we traced the child,” the police officer said.
He did not say whether the police identified Biswajit, a student of Central IT College and the son of Arun Giri’s elder brother, as the prime suspect before the raid or after finding him with Aneesh.
The police believe the ransom call was made by one of Biswajit’s associates. Aneesh, a student of Class III, was quoted as telling investigators that his cousin and a couple of other persons picked him up from near the school gate.
Asked why the police kept mum on the case until Aneesh’s rescue, the police officer said the media was kept in the dark to ensure that he did not come to harm. “The caller had identified himself as a militant and threatened to kill the child. We did not want to take any risk, especially after knowing that Adnan Patrawala, the Mumbai college student who was held to ransom and killed a few months ago, lost his life after the kidnapping news was flashed on TV channels.”
