BENGALURU/CHITRADURGA: On the afternoon of Dec 31, Chitradurga superintendent of police Ranjit Kumar Bandaru received an alarming call that set off a chain of events as dramatic as a crime thriller. Two 11-year-old boys claimed to have narrowly escaped a kidnapping attempt, leaving everyone—including police—on high alert.
The drama unfolded at Abbbinahole village near Imangala when the boys returned home without their schoolbags at 10am. Regularly, they would catch a bus to Dharmapura around 6.30am, attend private tuitions before entering the school at 9.30am. When asked about the early return, the boys claimed to have been abducted by three masked men in a “white Maruti Omni” who sprayed a mysterious liquid on their faces, knocking them unconscious. When they regained consciousness, the kidnappers allegedly declared in Hindi: “Yeh woh bachhe nahi hai” (These kids are not them), and abandoned the boys by the roadside.
Rushing to the scene, SP Bandaru immediately deployed teams to scour the area for the alleged kidnappers and their van, fearing a larger plot. The boys’ shaken demeanour and missing schoolbags lent credibility to their story, prompting officers to comb through CCTV footage and question local residents. But the pieces in the puzzle could not be put together as there were several loose ends in the tale.
Bandaru said he sensed something amiss when the schoolteachers told him that the two boys were known for their mischievous behaviour and never did their homework properly. “By then, officials from the different teams dispatched to trace the kidnappers and their vehicle came back with the news that none of the residents had seen any Omni Van moving around. Also, there were a few CCTV cameras at the place where the boys claimed to have been pushed into the vehicle. They too showed nothing,” he said.
Police questioned the boys separately and soon realised that there were many contradictions in their statements. With the help of the teacher, police comforted the boys, promising no punishment for revealing the truth. “Then they confessed to have said the fake story. The reason was that they were behind in completing their homework, which would attract punishment, including bringing the parents to school. To avoid it, they hatched the kidnap drama,” an investigating officer said.
Asked where the boys got the idea, another officer said: “This is the ill-effect of social media. These two have read a lot about abductions and other crime stories on social media and decided to cook up a similar one to escape the punishment.”
Police will close the case by filing a ‘B’ report, which means the complaint itself was false.
