Hyderabad: Seven-year-old was kept inside travel bag

Hyderabad: Seven-year-old Yeshesh Vijay Patra, who was kidnapped by a relative three days ago, had been compelled to drink sleeping syrup Pedicloryl and kept in a travel bag in order to avoid detection by cops.

“The gang took the bag to a rented flat in Vanasthalipuram. When they realised that the police has got their mobile phone from the scene of the offence and that a large number of cops were on the road searching for them, they decided to give up,” police said on Tuesday.

“One of the accused had lost his mobile phone near the victim’s house while they were trying to force the kid into the car. They feared that police would catch them soon, and decided to leave the kid at Sagar cross roads and inform his parents,” said LB nagar DCP Tafseer Iqbal.

Police said main accused Sai Krishna, 23, is a cousin of the victim's father Ashish Kumar and was unemployed. He conspired with two of his unemployed friends and a car driver to kidnap the kid so as to make some easy money. They wanted Rs 1 crore as ransom. Ashish Kumar runs a marble showroom in LB Nagar. “The gang used a fake number plate on their car to hoodwink the cops,” said the DCP.

The boy, Vijay Patra, was just outside his house on his bicycle at around 7 pm on September 12, when a white car pulled up near him and a stranger forcefully took him away. Five hours after the kidnap and a ransom call, the abductors called up his father and said that they left the boy near the Reliance Fresh store at Sagar crossroads.