MUMBAI: After a chase through multiple states, a police team traced a four-year-old boy who had been kidnapped recently from Malad (east), allegedly by his stepfather.
The accused, Anilkumar Sahani, had told his wife, Laxmi, to arrange for Rs 4. 5 lakh if she wanted to see her child again. Sahani, arrested for kidnapping and extortion, later told the police that he wanted to “teach his wife a lesson” for deserting him.
Sahani, a daily-wage earner, and Laxmi lived at Dehu, near Pune, with Laxmi’s children from her previous marriage. The couple fought often, the police said. Fed up, Laxmi moved to her sister’s home in Kurar village at Malad with her kids about nine months ago. The police said Sahani would visit her to convince her to get back home, but she refused.
To nab kidnapper of 4-year-old, cops run to K’taka & Andhra
On an earlier occasion, the accused had taken along two children from his wife’s previous marriage, without informing her, but got them back home later in the day.
On January 20, Sahani visited Laxmi again when the two had a fight. Early the next morning, he picked up her four-year-old son and left home. When Laxmi couldn’t find the boy or her husband until later that day, she approached the police who registered an FIR the following day.
Police teams began tracking Sahani’s phone location. “He was repeatedly calling up his wife and demanding Rs 4.5 lakh as compensation for all what he had spent during the 18 months that they had lived together. She told him she did not have so much money,” said senior inspector Satish Gadhve of Kurar police station. The police tracked Sahani’s location to Surat but was soon traced to Karnataka.
On January 24, sub-inspector Somnath Jadhav with constables Sunil Shinde and another identified only as Tijane boarded a bus for Bengaluru. But their colleagues tracking Sahani’s phone location told themto get of f at Hubli. He later went to Andhra Pradesh by train.“We travelled 600 km before we came close to nabbing him. It was night and we were waiting near a field when a local informed us that there was an electrical fence ahead and we should not move ahead,” said an officer.
On January 26, Sahaniwas taken into custody and brought to Mumbai with the child. “A medical examination revealed the boy had been unharmed,” an officer said.
