In a major breakthrough, city police on Wednesday claimed to have rescued a kidnapped businessman and also were able to arrest four wanted criminals in this connection.
A senior police officer said businessman Rajesh Jain, a Khandwa Bullion merchant, was rescued from a place in Faridabad, Haryana, after four days of his kidnapped.
The four accused have been identified as Omkar Singh, Sudhir Bhadoria, Hazi Mohammad Iman and Pradeep Singh (all natives of Uttar Pradesh) and they are being brought to Indore by a police team.
Ever since the abduction of Jain four days back, Indore police had been on its toes to secure safe release of him from the clutches of the accused.
IG Vipin Maheshwari, in a hurriedly convened Press conference here on Wednesday, informed that a police team of the crime branch led by Additional SP (crime) Dilip Soni had constantly been on look out for the accused on the basis of mobile trekking and information received through other sources. Accordingly they had raided several places in the past few days to track the accused as well as the victim but to no avail.
Following a tip-off, a joint police team from Indore and Khandwa reached Faridabad on Tuesday night where the police team with the help of Uttar Pradesh police secured safe release of the victim by cordoning of the area and arrested four persons.
Police also recovered one AK 47 rifle, five hand grenades and six pistols form their possession. Of the four accused arrested, Sudhir Bhadoria, Omkar Singh and Hazi Mohammad Imam are natives of Agra, while Pradip Singh belongs to Bulandshahar. All the accused are being taken back to Indore for further action in the case.
The police officer denied that any ransom money was paid to abductors to secure release of the bullion businessman, who was brought to the city on Wednesday evening. He said the accused after kidnapping the victim had allegedly administered some drugs on him in order to keep him unconscious.
As the police team raided a house in Faridabad, the victim was found lying unconscious in a room, police said, adding that of the four accused, Sudhir Bhadoria and Hazi Mohammad are kingpin of the gang and were carrying a reward of Rs 1 lakh each over their head by Uttar Pradesh and Haryana police. The accused during their preliminary query confessed to killing two police jawans of the STF in Uttar Pradesh sometime back.
The victim Rajesh Jain, a Khandwa-based jewellery trader, had been abducted from near Radission Square in Vijay Nagar locality four days back.
The matter came to light when the victim’s partner here received a call from his mobile in which unidentified people informed about Rajesh’s abduction and demanded a ransom of Rs 5 crore for his safe release.
Rajesh along with his business partner Santosh Jain and five others came to Indore in two cars on Saturday evening to finalise a land deal.
Sources informed that the victim Rajesh and his three others partners owned over seven acres of land in Khandwa district. The two imposters had told Rajesh that their company had been awarded a contract to develop a four-lane corridor near Icchapur on Indore-Khandwa road and the company top brass were interested in buying the trader’s land. Rajesh and his business partner, after getting thoroughly convinced by the two impostors, came to Indore to finalise the land deal with their bosses in Indore to finalise the deal. Unable to achieve breakthrough in the initial two days of the incident, Indore police had also announced a reward of Rs 1 lakh for giving any clue about the location of the victim.