Lucknow: The commissionerate police on Monday claimed to have solved the alleged kidnapping of a 21-year-old woman engineering student after recovering her along with her alleged 22-year-old husband from Basti railway station late Sunday night. A resident of Barra in the city, she had stage-managed her ‘kidnapping’ with the help of the man, police said, adding that both have been booked on charges of extortion and criminal conspiracy and sent to jail.
During investigation, it came to fore that both had got married in court on May 22, 2023, and as they were running short of money, they conspired the plot of kidnapping to fleece money from her parents. “The woman vanished from her Barra home on August 4, made a video of herself with a handkerchief tied around her face, and sent it to her parents the same day telling them that she had been kidnapped,” police said.
Later, the man made a phone call to her parents and demanded a ransom of Rs 10 lakh for her safe release. However, the police zeroed in on them with the help of surveillance and nabbed them from Basti railway station on the intervening night of Sunday and Monday.
Assistant commissioner of police (ACP) Naubasta Abhishek Pandey said, “The police have brought the engineering student, Hansika Verma, and her alleged husband Raj (22) to Kanpur from Basti on Monday.”
After their questioning, they were booked under relevant IPC sections, including 386 (whoever commits extortion by putting any person in fear of death or of grievous hurt), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 120 B (whoever is a party to a criminal conspiracy other than a criminal conspiracy to commit an offence) against the two and after being produced in court, they have been sent to jail.
“In this case, the accused have been sent to jail on charges of conspiring to kidnap themselves and misleading the police,” he said further.
Joint commissioner of police Anand Prakash Tiwari said that the report of kidnapping for ransom had been registered on the complaint of Narendra Kumar Verma, the father of the woman and a resident of Barra Vishwa Bank Colony on July 4 after she vanished from her home.
“Many pieces of evidence made the kidnapping seem suspicious right from the beginning. It came to fore that she gad an affair with Raj, a resident of Barra-6 and both had reportedly got married in court. Five police teams were looking for them. Finally, the police managed to nab the girl student and her alleged boy-friend from Basti railway station,” Tiwari said.
Investigation also revealed the fact that the girl had given Rs 2.21 lakh to her alleged husband from her fixed deposit fund.
A police officer privy to the investigation said when the police came to know about Raj’s criminal history, they were worried that he might kill the student for fear of being implicated. “There was a case of robbery lodged against him in Kanpur,” he said, adding that the police were also probing reports of their court marriage.
He added that the woman, who was studying engineering from a local college, has an account in Punjab National Bank from which Rs 8,000-10,000 were withdrawn from Thursday to Friday night. Police are now scanning other accounts of the girl student.
