Mumbai Crime: Four kidnap, force man who duped them to work in fields

The victim was beaten up by the accused, who threatened to kill him if he disobeyed them. Representation pic

The NM Joshi Marg police have arrested one person and are on the lookout for four others in connection with the kidnapping of a 45-year-old florist from Currey Road. The accused kept the victim, Ramesh Kale, at different locations in Sangli and Karnataka over a month. The florist had allegedly duped the abductors of Rs 7 lakh and the latter were trying to recover the amount, according to the police.

Ramesh's shop - which is run by his wife, Sunita - is situated in front of the Marathon Futurex building on Currey Road. The florist hails from Osmanabad but used to work in the sugarcane fields of various districts of the state during the harvest season.

Around 6 pm on December 1, 2022, when Ramesh was at his shop, an unknown person approached him, claiming he had a huge order and needed to discuss the matter. Ramesh was asked by the person to get into a taxi. After the cab traversed some distance, two more men got inside and the vehicle headed to Sangli district.

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The next day, when Ramesh didn't return, Sunita registered a missing complaint at the NM Joshi Marg police station. Later, she received a call from unknown number and the person on the other end told her that Ramesh had been abducted and would be released unharmed if she coughed up R7 lakh.

Sunita couldn't guess who was behind the abduction and tried her best to scrape together the ransom. The abductors kept calling Sunita, but when she realised she was helpless, she rushed to the police station and registered a complaint against the unknown callers.

DCP (Zone 3) Akbar Pathan immediately directed Senior Inspector Sunil Chandramore to form a team to track the accused. The team, which comprised five constables, was led by Assistant Inspector Pravin Jadhav.

"The accused were clever. They were on conference calls while talking to the wife so the cops couldn't find out in whose clutches the victim was," said a police officer. "The numbers and SIM cards used were also different, making it difficult for cops to track them" he added. The team was dispatched across the state on December 8 and returned on December 13.

Thanks to an in-depth analysis of the call details and local informers, the cops finally learnt that one of the abductors was in Sangli and Ramesh happened to be with him. The team arrived in the district on December 28.

The accused, Santosh Kale, 28, was a sugarcane cutter by profession. Investigators later learnt about the alleged involvement of three siblings - Bapu Chavhan, Vilas Chavhan and Mayura Chavhan - and another person. Santosh was arrested and Ramesh was rescued on January 1.

The reason

According to the police, Ramesh had taken R7 lakh from the Chavhans on the pretext of providing 20 daily-wage workers to cut their sugarcane in 2021. After no one showed up, Bapu, a history-sheeter against whom cases of kidnapping and murder have been filed, was enraged. The Chavhans initially demanded R7 lakh from Sunita but when she told them this was too much, they eventually brought it down to Rs 1 lakh.

After Ramesh was brought to Sangli, he was chained and made to work in the fields for the rest of the month. He was also beaten up by the accused, who threatened to kill him if he disobeyed them.

DCP Pathan told mid-day, "It was a challenge to track the victim as well as arrest the accused who were constantly on the run. If kidnappers got a hint of our actions, they could have harmed the victim. The credit goes to the team who worked tirelessly to track the accused."

1 Jan
Day the victim was rescued by the police