Mumbai Crime: Driver gets job with builder with aim of kidnapping his kids

One of the boys managed to untie his hands and escaped from the school bus he was kept inside. Representation pic

The DN Nagar police rescued 10-year-old twin brothers on Monday who were kidnapped by their driver, who grew nervous and abandoned the plan soon after abducting them. The man had demanded a ransom of Rs 1 crore from the boys' father, a well-known builder from Juhu.

The 45-year-old driver hatched the kidnapping with his 23-year old brother-in-law to get his daughter married with the ransom money. The driver used to work for the boys' grandfather until a decade ago when he left. He returned two months back and was employed by the builder. The two boys play tennis at a tennis court in Manish Nagar and the driver was responsible for ferrying them to and back from the court.

At 6 pm on Monday, the driver picked up the boys in a jeep. Then he appeared at DN Nagar police station at 9 pm, saying a man kidnapped him and the children. He claimed that one boy was being held inside a school bus in Juhu and the other was in the jeep parked near PVR. He said that their hands were tied and they had been made to consume tablets that made them unconscious.

Then, the driver claimed, that the kidnapper brought him to DN Nagar on a bike, where his colleagues joined and the group beat him up. He managed to escape and rushed to the police station. He also claimed that the boy in the bus had been stabbed in the stomach.

"We rescued the boy from the jeep but the one in the bus was not found. We came to know that the child untied his hand, came out of the bus and called his father by asking for a passer-by's phone," a police officer said.

"The boy's father had also received a call from an unknown number, demanding Rs 1 crore in exchange for both his sons," the officer added. The police also suspected the driver's actions and during interrogation, he spilled the beans.

The driver had returned to work for the builder with the motive of kidnapping the boys and shared the plan with his brother-in-law in Delhi, who arrived in Mumbai eight days ago. The plan was executed on Monday evening, with the brother-in-law, armed with a knife, accosting the driver and the children and demanding the ransom from the builder. He used an app that concealed the true mobile number when he called the builder. But what ruined the kidnapping was the builder asking them to send pictures of the boys on WhatsApp, which would have revealed their number. The two then decided to ditch the plan and narrated a false story to the police. Senior Police Inspector Bharat Gaikwad said that the accused have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, including for kidnapping.