Hyderabad: Using clues given by a 14-year-old boy who managed to escape his captors the Medchal police arrested BTech student Gaddam Nagendra Babu, 25, and his friend Thatapathi Jogi Prasad, 27, a businessman from Balajinagar, on Friday for kidnapping him and threatening his father, a businessman, that they will murder the boy if he did not pay a ransom of Rs 10 lakh.
On August 19, the boy, Y. Manidhar, was on way to school on his bicycle when a silver coloured car pulled up. Two men got out from it and pulled him down from his cycle. A few hours later his father received a call asking him to pay Rs 10 lakh or he will never see his son again.
“The person gave his name as Pramod. He said he will kill my son if I did not pay,” said the father, Y. Giri Babu, a businessman staying at Archana Estate in Kistapur, an area in Medchal. Meanwhile, enroute to their hideout, one of the men tied the boy’s hands with a rope and taped his mouth shut.
“Y. Manidhar, a student of Nagarjuna School, was abducted from Kistapur Canal on August 19 at around 8:30 am,” said inspector S. Venkat Reddy of Medchal police.
On the same day Manidhar escaped from the kidnappers’ hideout in Muneerabad on the city’s outskirts. “The boy managed to untie his hands as the rope was worn out. He reached the main road half a km away. He stopped a car and asked the driver to help him,” added inspector Darshan Reddy. The man in the car, a petrol pump owner, informed the police.
The boy told the police about his escape and also that the car had a ‘doraemon’ sticker on it with the words ‘make way for ambulance’ in Telugu. The police located the car (TS 03 UA 6550) on Saturday at 6 am at Medchal check post and arrested the two people in it. “They admitted the kidnap as well as a robbery in Keesara in which where they had stolen Rs 1.18 lakh from the house of businessman Sadhineni Sudheer,” said DCP crimes, Balanagar Zone, G. Janaki Sharmila. Cops seized wo bikes, two phones, a car and Rs 90,000 from them.
