A 10-year-old boy was abducted from outside his Tiljala home on Friday afternoon after which his family got ransom calls for Rs10 lakh.

He was rescued from a guesthouse in Behala’s Parnasree, some 10km from his home, on Saturday morning.

Police arrested his maternal uncle, who apparently confessed to plotting his nephew’s kidnap, and two others, Ranjit Kumar and Vishwajeet Kumar, that he allegedly hired for the abduction.

A Tiljala police station officer said they started the probe by examining call details of numbers from where ransom demands were made. “We found one number which was frequently contacted before and after the abduction. It belonged to the uncle,” he said.

“The time just before and after the commission of the crime is very important. We found that the kidnappers were dialling a particular number during this period. This number belonged to the child’s own maternal uncle,” said an officer of the Tiljala police station.

The police zeroed in on the maternal uncle who purportedly admitted to plotting the kidnap of his nephew.

Based on his statement, the police raided a guesthouse named Vidyasagar in Parnasree and found the child in the presence of the two men who had allegedly carried out the abduction.

Preliminary investigations by the police suggest that the two had been hired by the uncle. All three have been booked for abduction for ransom and criminal conspiracy. They will be produced before the court on Sunday.

The child has been handed over to his mother.