Luck runs out for neighbour who abducted boy and then led police on wild goose chase

In yet another case of kidnapping for ransom in east Delhi, a couple who kidnapped a five-year-old boy from his residence on the pretext of buying him a kite were arrested on Saturday.

Asadul Aslam had hid the boy in a house in Tahirpur, after he sent the police on a wild goose chase by constantly changing his locations and that of the drop off points.

Aslam was eventually tracked to Surya Nagar by cops and gave the police party a brief chase.

To evade them, he stripped of and camouflaged himself in mud area.

However, he was eventually spotted by locals who had been conducting their own search operation.

The boy, Aman, was reunited with his mother Anweri Devi, who works as a domestic maid in Dilshad Garden. His father Ishrar had been working abroad in Kuwait as a labourer.

Aslam and his wife Riksona used to live next to the boy's house and had their eyes set on him as they thought his family was rich.

Aman's parents had recently bought a high-end television and Aslam approached the boy and became friends with him by buying him sweets on a daily basis.

He then took some identification details of a resident in his locality and bought a SIM on those papers.

On Friday, after Aslam kidnapped the boy, he called Anweri Devi and demanded a ransom of Rs 8 lakh, using the same SIM which threw investigators off guard.

Speaking to Millennium Post, the boy's mother said she initially did not want to go to the police thinking that they would not believe her.

"There was a case of a child who went missing in my locality and was not found. I did not want to go to the police, but my employer Liza took me to the police station and filed the complaint," she said.

After several ransom calls were made, police constituted a team comprising 20 personnel under the supervision of the DCP and ACP.

Even as cops tried to track the calls, Aslam kept changing his location constantly.

"He instructed the mother to send the money in a TSR near Apsara border. We deputed three police men in three separate vehicles. He then changed his location to Anand Vihar railway station and later to Apsara border," said DCP, Shahdara, Nupur Prasad.