Police supervised the payment of a Rs 30-lakh ransom to kidnappers 17 days after the hostage had been killed, the victim’s family said on Friday, alleging the cops were in cahoots with the criminals.

Relatives of Sanjeet Yadav, 28, a Kanpur resident kidnapped on June 22, had already alleged a police-kidnapper nexus saying the cops had made no attempt to catch the gang after the ransom handover below a flyover on July 13. At the time, the family did not know that the kidnapped pathology lab technician was dead. The police claim the “ransom bag” contained no money.

On Friday, after the police announced the pre-dawn arrest of the alleged kidnappers and revealed that Sanjeet had been killed on June 26, his family erupted in anger as did social media users.

This is the third time a police-criminal nexus has been alleged in Uttar Pradesh this month.

After gangster Vikas Dubey’s saga of police patronage spilled out following his massacre of eight cops on July 3, relatives of murdered Ghaziabad journalist Vikram Joshi on Wednesday accused the police of provoking criminals he had accused of molesting a family member to kill him.

Facing an outcry over the ransom fiasco, the state government on Friday suspended Kanpur South additional superintendent of police Aparna Gupta, circle officer Manoj Gupta, inspector Rajesh Kumar, a sub-inspector and six constables.

Kanpur senior superintendent of police Dinesh Kumar P had already on July 16 suspended Ranjeet Rai, a police inspector who led the “ransom handover” team.

On July 13, Sanjeet’s father Chaman Singh Yadav had accompanied Rai’s team to the spot where the ransom was to be paid.

The following day, ASP Aparna Gupta had told reporters the police were on the flyover for the handover as agreed but the criminals appeared below it and demanded the bag be dropped from above.

“So the police couldn’t reach them,” she had said, while adding the bag contained no money.

The state government has sent additional director-general of police B.P. Jogdand to Kanpur to probe whether a ransom was indeed paid.

The family insists the bag contained Rs 30 lakh and has also contradicted Gupta’s account of its handover on the basis of Chaman Singh’s testimony.

According to the father, the police team waited at a distance from the flyover while he accompanied a single plainclothes cop to the top with the bag. Chaman then received a call from the kidnappers, asking the bag be dropped below the flyover. The accompanying cop advised Chaman to agree and he did.

“It was the police who had asked us to arrange the money and put it in a bag. Everything went according to the plan chalked out by the police,” a woman relative of Sanjeet told reporters on Friday.

“There was only one police team and it stood more than 200 metres from the flyover. Rai and his team members left the place as soon as the kidnappers picked the bag up and fled in their car.”

She alleged the police team had come to the spot to provide “safe passage” to the kidnappers.

“The police knew how we were arranging the money. We sold our jewellery and mortgaged other assets. The police kept misleading us from June 23, when we submitted a missing-person report,” she alleged.

“The ransom calls began from June 29. They made 21 calls between June 29 and July 13 and the police knew every development.”

Arrests

Earlier, SSP Dinesh Kumar had announced Sanjeet’s death and the 2am arrest of five alleged kidnappers — Sanjeet’s colleague Kuldeep Kumar and four others, including a woman.

He didn’t provide too many details apart from saying the police had zeroed in on the suspects on the basis of a phone call Kuldeep had made to Sanjeet on the day of the kidnapping.

“Sanjeet used to say he would soon sell some of his land at his ancestral village and start his own pathology test centre. Kuldeep decided to kidnap him with the help of his friends to take that money,” Kumar said.

“He invited Sanjeet to dinner at a dhaba in the Panki area of Kanpur city and kidnapped him.”

Kumar said the suspects had confessed that Sanjeet was strangled and thrown into the Ganga at the city’s Pandu locality on June 26.

“But they kept telling the family they would release Sanjeet after receiving the money,” Kumar said. Sanjeet’s body is yet to be found.

Two audio clips circulating on social media for the past one week, which Sanjeet’s family says are recordings of conversations between the kidnappers and Chaman, suggest the criminals had no fear of the police.

“I will call you next week. Arrange Rs 30 lakh. You don’t need to go to the police as it would put you in trouble,” a man says in one of the clips.

In the other, the same man appears to say: “The police will not help you; don’t waste your time with them.”