Chennai boy’s kidnappers nabbed, Rs.1 crore ransom seized

CHENNAI - Two men, one a management graduate from Britian and the other an engineering student, were Wednesday arrested for kidnapping a schoolboy two days back. The Rs.1 crore ransom money his parents paid for his release was also recovered, police said.

Chennai police had Tuesday overseen the ransom paid to the duo to secure 14-year-old R. Keerthivasan’s release.

“We have arrested R. Vijaykumar and K. Prabhu, the two who kidnapped Keerthivasan, and also recovered the ransom money. We were sure of nabbing them even when the ransom money was paid on Tuesday. In fact, the boy’s father Ramesh didn’t have that much money and we helped him with cash,” Chennai Police Commissioner T. Rajendran told reporters here.

He said Vijaykumar is a B.Tech graduate with a management degree from a university in Britain and Prabhu is a diploma holder in mechanical engineering and a part-time engineering student here.

Keerthivasan, a Class 9 student of DAV School here, was kidnapped from near his school Monday evening when Vijaykumar and Prabhu brandished knifes and threatened the driver. The driver was asked to get down after travelling some distance.

The boy’s father, identified only as Ramesh, is a businessman with interests in the granite trade. He got a ransom demand for Rs.3 crore and insisted on paying the ransom to get his son back.

The city police were under pressure to secure the schoolboy’s safe release as two school children were killed by their kidnappers in Coimbatore the previous day.

According to Rajendran, the police asked Ramesh to negotiate with the kidnappers and the amount was finalised at Rs.1 crore.

Tuesday afternoon, the boy was dropped near his residence by the abductors who collected the money while on a motorcycle.

Ramesh noted down the two-wheeler’s registration number, which the police found to be registered in Vijaykumar’s name. The police arrested Vijaykumar from his residence here and nabbed Prabhu too.

Ramesh thanked the police and said: “I followed the instructions given by the police.”

According to police, the abductors were relatives of one of Ramesh’s employees.