Three men were arrested in Hyderabad on Monday night for their alleged role in the abduction of two men in Kolkata who were later accused of rape.
Police said Vikram Das, 37, the prime suspect in the abduction case, Ayan Das, 32, and Sushanta Mandal, 34, were arrested in Hyderabad before they could flee to
Mumbai.
“The thee were wanted in connection with the kidnapping of a man and his driver. After the abduction, the accused allegedly used the man’s car to cook up a story of gang rape,” an officer of Kolkata police said.
“Das is an accused in a fraud case in Mumbai and was wanted by the police there. He plotted the kidnapping with the intention to extort money from the victim.
He had planned to use the money to repay the fraud victim in Mumbai,” said an
officer.
The police said they had evaded the cops here and went to Odisha and Visakhapatnam before reaching Hyderabad. Their next destination was Mumbai but they were arrested before they could leave Hyderabad.
Earlier, the police had arrested Souvik Kumar Mal for allegedly helping Das implement the abduction plan.
“The accused had tried to falsely implicate the abducted men in a rape case to mislead the police investigation,” said an officer of the detective department of Kolkata
police.
“We are probing the role of the woman who lodged a complaint of gang rape against the abducted men with Anandapur police station. The men were apparently kept confined in a flat in Netajinagar around the time when the woman claimed she was raped by them,” the officer said.
The arrested trio were produced in a court in Kolkata on Tuesday and were remanded in police custody till December 19.