Two kidnappers arrested, boy rescued in Chennai

Two foreign-educated youths in search of quick money were arrested for kidnapping a 14-year-old boy and releasing him after collecting a ransom of Rs100mn in Chennai last week. R Vijay Kumar and his cousin K Prabhu kidnapped Keerthivasan after overpowering his car driver outside his school in Mogappair.
They then hid him inside the car’s boot which had its speaker systems removed for ventilation and kept phoning Keerthivasan’s father Ramesh for ransom. Police tracked the car for two days using cell phone towers. The two men came to Ramesh’s house to collect the money on a bike after parking the car with the boy nearby. They escaped after throwing the car keys. However the police noted the bike’s number and caught them within hours. Investigations also found that the two had earlier stolen a car but had not been caught. Police were extra cautious during this rescue, after the tragic rape and murder of a brother and sister kidnapped in Coimbatore the previous week. The kidnappers who had pretended to be school van drivers had collected Muskan, 8 and her brother Hrithik, murdered them and thrown them into a canal near Pollachi about 50km away. However they were caught when the children’s grandmother identified them from police records.