Alambagh kidnapper lured boys with energy drink, ₹50
Two boys were kidnapped in Alambagh by 19-year-old Vijay Sharma, who demanded ₹10 lakh ransom. They were rescued by police after tracking him down.
What began with a bottle of energy drink and a promise of ₹50 turned into a night-long nightmare for two children, who were kidnapped from Alambagh here on Thursday afternoon.
Police said the kidnapper, Vijay Sharma (19), approached Arjun Singh (12) and Pradyuman Yadav (10) when they were bicycling with another friend of theirs in BG Colony of Alambagh and promised them an energy drink and money. While their friend refused the offer, Arjun and Pradyuman followed Sharma, who was a stranger to them.
Sharma used one of the two boys’ bicycles to take them to Charbagh. Once at the bus station, he boarded a bus to Lakhimpur Kheri with the boys, police said.
In Lakhimpur Kheri, he took them to two temples, one of which was the Gola Gokarannath temple, made videos and bought the boys ‘chaat’ or Indian snacks, all to mislead police, officials said on Saturday.
Even as the two kids’ families frantically looked for them, the kin received WhatsApp messages from Sharma, whose ransom demand included ₹10 lakh. He even told them details of the boys, the bikes owned by the families, and what kind of autorickshaw one of the fathers drove. He made Arjun call his mother. Arjun was heard saying: “Mummy, paisa de do, warna yeh maar dalenge (Mother, please give him the money. Or else he will kill us).”
“Though Sharma had switched his phone off, police tracked him down when he powered it up on Friday morning. A team went to Gola Gokarannath in Lakhimpur Kheri and rescued both boys unharmed,” said deputy commissioner of police (DCP)-Central Ashish Srivastava at a presser on Saturday.
Sharma, who originally hails from Sitapur, was working odd jobs in Pune. He had returned to Lucknow 10 days ago.
CCTV footage from Charbagh and other locations show Sharma and the children on a bicycle. “The footage is crucial in piecing together the sequence of events,” a senior officer said, adding that Sharma initially tried to mislead interrogators by claiming that two more people were also involved in the crime. However, there was no evidence to support his claim, he added.
