Bengaluru: A movie director and four others were arrested by the West division police on charges of kidnapping a publicist over financial dispute. The police rescued the victim and nabbed the accused within four hours after the complaint was registered.
Murthy, Kiran and the victim, Paramesh
The accused have been identified as R.R. Madan, Chalapathi B. Kolara, Kiran, Murthy and Mohan. They have been accused of kidnapping Paramesh, 29, a resident of Shivanahalli in Basaveshwaranagar, who owns Ravi Akshaya Advertising, an agency involved in movie promotions.
Police said that Madan is the director of the recently released Kannada flick Eradu Kanasu that had Vijay Raghavendra and Karunya Ram in the lead roles. The movie that released two months ago had not fared well in the box office.
Madan, who is said to have invested some money in the movie, suffered huge losses. He was upset that the film
was not promoted aggressively. As Paramesh was in charge for publicity and he was paid Rs 16.3 lakh, Madan started blaming Paramesh that he did not plan the promotions properly and asked him return Rs 8 lakh. Paramesh in turn started avoiding Madan.
“So Madan chalked out a plan to recover his money by kidnapping Paramesh for ransom. He approached Chalapathi B Kolara, who has worked as an assistant director for about 10 years and had recently made his directorial debut with the recently launched movie ‘Vega’, as Paramesh knew him,” police said.
Chalapathi roped in three other for the job. On Wednesday around 10.30 am, Chalapathi and other accused met Paramesh near Basaveshwaranagar 8th Main and Chalapathi told him that he wanted to give the publicity works of his new movie to him. On the pretext of discussing the same, the accused took Paramesh to a farmhouse owned by Madan at Kaadayarappanahalli near Devanahalli, where he was illegally detained, the police added.
The accused reportedly tied him up and assaulted him using cricket bat and belt. On Thursday they made a ransom call to Paramesh’s uncle and demanded Rs 8 lakh for Paramesh’s safe release, but the uncle did not take it seriously. The next day, they contacted Paramesh’s father Gurusiddappa and demanded the ransom.
Around 3 pm, Gurusiddappa filed a complaint with the Magadi Road police station. Though the offence was not under their jurisdiction, the case was taken up and special teams were formed. The father was asked to get in touch with the abductors and as per their direction, he was sent at Kannamangala Gate near Devanahalli on the pretext of giving them ransom money. When he met one of the accused there, the police teams nabbed him around 7 pm. He was taken to the farm house and the victim was rescued, and four others arrested, the police added. A Toyota Qualis car used in the offence was seized.
