Doctor abducted by cabbie rescued after high stakes chase, shootout

The police took part in a rescue operation, which involved an encounter with gangsters and a chase till Haridwar, before finally rescuing the doctor.

East District police deputed several police, while coordinating with the local police at the same time, and raided multiple hideouts of the accused persons, who kept changing their locations in a bid to evade the police.

On Sunday, the police finally managed to trace the accused, who had holed up in their hideout in Meerut. What followed then was a brief exchange of fire, as an encounter took place between the cops and members of the crime syndicate. The doctor escaped unhurt during the shootout, but one of the kidnappers was injured in the hail of bullets.

"Raids are still underway and the operation is still not over. The encounter was undertaken by Delhi Police and none of the accused have still being arrested. We have confirmed that the doctor is safe. He is currently being brought back to Delhi, but is stuck in traffic due to the Kanwar procession," said Joint Commissioner of Police (East) Ravindra Yadav.

Dr Srikanth Goud, who works at Delhi Metro Hospital, was kidnapped by a driver working for the web-based cab aggregator company Ola on July 6.

Goud was returning from his evening shift and had booked the cab to South Delhi.

After some of his colleagues got down from the cab, the doctor was alone when the gang, with which the driver was affiliated, abducted him and made a ransom call to Ola and demanded a ransom of Rs 5 crore. It may be noted here that the gang never made the call to Goud's family.

Despite active coordination from Ola, the police only reached dead ends, as the profile of the driver turned out to be fake, while the gang kept changing locations.

After the gang was traced to a house in Meerut district, local police from Partapur town managed to track down the location of the accused in Daurala village.

Policemen then posed as family members of the victim, while some of them posed as representatives of the cab aggregator firm, and spoke to the kidnappers. They told the kidnappers that they would pay the ransom amount since it was their customer who had been kidnapped.

The police then began tailing a car in which the accused were travelling. After one their tyre's punctured, the accused soon spotted the police party and fled into an open field.

Some members of the gang were identified and the police soon zeroed in on the house in Partapur and exchanged fire, after which the doctor was rescued.