Delhi: Man arrested for kidnapping children for Rs 50 lakh ransom

New Delhi, Jul 5 (PTI) A man has been arrested for kidnapping a boy and his sister for ransom last month, a crime, police said, he committed after seeing that the children were alone in a car with their parents out to buy sweets from a East Delhi shop.

Prateek Shrivastava, 34, was apprehended on Thursday evening from Mandawali.

Police traced his location after examining footage from more than 300 CCTV cameras, Deputy Commissioner of Police (East) Apoorva Gupta said.

The officer said Shrivastava was aware that the parents had left the car keys inside the vehicle and managed to convince the children that he had been asked to take the car to a parking lot.

Shrivastava drove away with the six-year-old boy and 11-year-old girl on June 28.

Their father informed police about the incident and a search, involving 200 police vehicles, was launched, Gupta said.

The car was located and police vehicles chased it for about 200 kilometres inside the city with Shrivastava abandoning the car near Samaypur Badli and fleeing, he said.

The children were rescued and a hunt for the culprit was launched, Gupta said and added that he was arrested from Mandawali where he lived with his wife and two children.

Shrivastava, an air-conditioner mechanic, made a Rs 50-lakh ransom demand when the children’s father called the mobile-phone which his wife had left in the car, the official said.

Gupta said the accused had observed that parents leave their child or children in cars to make quick purchases. On June 28, when he saw the children in the car alone, it prompted him to implement his plan to kidnap them and then demand a ransom, the officials said.

Shrivastava had earlier worked for cab aggregators and food delivery apps, Gupta said and added that his plan was to ask the victims’ parents to sent the money through a app-based fast courier service. The Faridabad-based family had come to Delhi to spend their Friday in the city and enjoy its street food. They had stopped as the girl wanted to have some sweets, according to police.