Youth held for staging ‘kidnapping’

Friends’ ploy to extort ransom from families exposed

KHANEWAL:

A college student has been arrested along with four accomplices on the charge of staging his own kidnapping to receive Rs2 million in ransom from his family after suffering loss in online business.

The family of Abdullah, a second-year student of a private college and resident of Colony No.1 had informed the Khanewal city police that unidentified people had kidnapped him and demanded Rs 2 million ransom.

The police registered a case and started investigation.

The suspects sent the family a message on WhatsApp, demanding the ransom, and an agreement was reached to pay Rs500,000.

The money was transferred to the phone banking account of the kidnapped youth and he returned home after a few hours.

Read: https://tribune.com.pk/story/2450362/police-recover-three-children-kidnapped-as-revenge-for-failed-marriage

When the police went to record his statement after two days, his family refused to allow it, saying he was too terrified to speak about the matter. When the SHO questioned him later, he kept giving contradictory statements contrary to the phone call data record (CDR) while sobbing.

According to a police official, he claimed that a girlfriend of his from Lahore had kidnapped him in a car and recorded hid nude videos. When the police viewed the closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage of the spot mentioned by the youth, his story about the kidnapping proved false.

The boy then confessed that he had staged the kidnapping with his four friends and kept asking for money from his family through phone chat.

He conceded that he had stayed in a hotel in Multan with his friends Sameer, Adan, Shahzeb and Abdul Rehman.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 12^th, 2024.