Angul, July 11: Presence of mind helped a Class IX student of a public school in Bhubaneswar to escape from his captors. The 14-year-old, who was missing since Saturday, escaped from his abductors while they were asleep on Tuesday.

He was taken to the Talcher police station by some slum dwellers whom he approached for help after escaping.

Raj Pruthi Raj, a student of a public school in Chintamaniswar, is the only son of truck driver Bibhuti Bhushan Raj. The boy managed to throw himself out of a slowly moving vehicle when his abductors were sleeping.

They were taking him to an unknown destination through Talcher.

The Talcher police took him to the place where he was picked up by the kidnappers. “The boy said he was kept in a garage in Banrpal,” said inspector in charge of Talcher police station B. Patra.

Raj was going to school on his bicycle on Saturday morning when he was kidnapped by four persons. His school is around 500 metres away from his residence at Buddheswari colony in Bhubaneswar.

The boy told his family members that he had heard his captors talking of selling him off in Mumbai or Chennai.

“He even told me that the kidnappers had taken another boy from Cuttack whose name was Abhishek and that boy could not escape from their clutches,” said Bikram Raj, the boy’s uncle.

The Laxmi Sagar police, with whom Raj’s family members had lodged a complaint, have registered a case of kidnapping.

“We will conduct raids with the help of Talcher police to nab the culprits,” said a senior police officer at Laxmi Sagar police station.