A 25-year-old youth was allegedly kidnapped, killed and thrown into a well in Kanhakhera village of Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh after his abductors didn’t receive a ransom of Rs 20 lakh they had demanded from his family.
Brijesh Pal, who worked in an agency that weighs trucks on highways for the levy of toll, did not return home on July 17. His body was found in the well on Tuesday.
A kidnapper answered the mobile phone of Brijesh when his cousin Sarvesh called his number on July 17. He asked Sarvesh to arrange Rs 20 lakh and not to go to the police.
But Brijesh’s elder brother Rajesh immediately registered a written complaint with the police.
However, the family alleged that instead of searching for the abducted youth, the police picked up Brijesh’s younger brother Mukesh and tortured him in a police station to force him to accept he had kidnapped his brother for ransom.
Police have denied the charge of torture.
Inspector-general of Kanpur Mohit Agrawal had said on Monday that they were close to cracking the case.
Anurag Vats, superintendent of police of Kanpur Rural, said: “We have arrested a friend of Brijesh on the basis of certain inputs and are interrogating him.”
However, Brijesh’s elder brother Rajesh said: “The police was never serious about recovering my brother. First, they tortured my youngest brother and tried to implicate him in the case and later started saying it was a family matter.”
This is the second murder after abduction in Kanpur in recent weeks and the third in Uttar Pradesh.
Sanjeet Yadav, a 28-year-old lab technician, was kidnapped for ransom on June 22 and killed on June 26. Sanjeets’s father Chaman Lal Yadav had paid a Rs 30-lakh ransom on July 13 in the presence of the police while believing that his son was safe.
But the police revealed after arresting three people on July 24 that they had killed and thrown Sanjeet in the Pandu river. His body has not been recovered yet.
On Sunday, Balram Gupta, a 14-year-old boy was kidnapped in Gorakhpur. The boy was found dead on Monday.
