A 21-year-old nursing student from a private college was abducted and tortured for six and a half hours before releasing him after his friends paid a ransom of ₹18,000 in Thanisandra on Friday.
The victim, Mohammed Jaseel, was bruised and battered and admitted to the hospital for treatment before approaching the Sampigehalli police on Saturday.
According to the victim, he was outside his house on Friday morning when the gang of five abducted him around 11 a.m. and forcibly took him to an isolated place. Two of the accused are said to be students and known to the victim.
The torture began as they removed his watch, disrobed him, and started beating him up. The accused demanded a ransom of ₹30,000 for his release, and threatened to call his family to tell them a fake story that Jaseel was involved in a drug case .
They started torturing him to share the PIN number of his phone and and took his nude videos threatening to upload it on social media.
The accused called Jaseel’s friends to demand the ransom, but his friends said that they had only ₹5,000. The torture continued further until his friends could arrange ₹18,000 and paid the accused to get him released. One of the accused even threatened Jaseel that he was recently accused in a murder case reported in a private college and he would be killed.
The police have taken up a case of abduction, extortion, assault and criminal intimidation and launched a manhunt to track down the accused.
“We have some leads about the accused and will be arrested soon”, a senior police officer said, adding that the accused and the victims are friends. Though the victim claimed that there was no financial dealing between them, the police said that could have been the motive behind the crime.
