Two persons arrested by police in Bhubaneswar. Telegraph picture

Bhubaneswar, May 5: City police today seized a country-made gun, six live bullets and three knives from a house in Sundarpada where a lawyer had been kept locked after being kidnapped by a group of seven persons. The lawyer was abducted from his residence at Khandagiri on April 26.

The Khandagiri police had forwarded the kidnapper duo, including the prime accused, to the court in connection with the case and had seized a car from them yesterday. The accused were identified as Dibya Ranjan Pradhan (26) from Puri and Shovan Mishra (27) from Angul district. Five others involved in the crime are still absconding.

While Pradhan was employed with a financial company, Shovan was a businessman. According to police, these youths had kidnapped Sunil Kumar Pallei, a high court lawyer from his Khandagiri residence in the pretext of discussing a legal matter in the evening of April 26. They later kept him confined to a house in Sundarpada.

Pallei, however, managed to escape from the place the next day. Scared, he straight went to his native place in Berhampur. On returning to Bhubaneswar on May 2, he lodged a complaint in the Khandagiri police station.

Pallei, who had been practicing law at the high court in Cuttack since 2003, said in his complaint that in October last year, he came to know that Pradhan had taken some nude photos of his schoolteacher’s daughter, while she was working for a private company in the capital.

Pradhan was threatening to circulate the photos if she did not marry him. The lawyer then approached the Mahila police station in Berhampur. “But the inspector did not take any steps to resolve the matter. It prompted Pradhan to take revenge on me as I had interfered in the matter,” said Pallei.Police are yet to arrest Pradhan’s associates. “We are investigating into the matter and searching for other accused persons,” said deputy commissioner of police Himanshu Lal.