New Delhi: A five-year-old boy, who was abducted from a school bus here on the eve of Republic Day, was rescued on Tuesday after an encounter between the police and kidnappers in Ghaziabad, an official said.
Rehan was rescued in the early hours after a Crime Branch team received a tip-off and laid a trap in a residential area on the Loni border, a Crime Branch official said. In the shoot-out, one of the kidnappers, Ravi, was killed and his accomplice Pankaj suffered injuries to his leg. The third, Nitin, was arrested. No police personnel were hurt, he said. Two bike-borne persons had also shot at and injured the driver when he tried to stop them from kidnapping the boy near the GTB Enclave in Shahdara on January 25.
A team of Crime Branch officials raided the fifth floor of a flat in Shalimar City barely 11 km from the Shahdara residence of the abducted child. The team intercepted a man supplying them information and learnt about the hideout.
Police laid a trap near Loni border, but Ravi opened fire. One of the policemen was hit by a bullet. He was saved by a bulletproof jacket. The Ghaziabad police denied any intelligence failure on their part even as they remained clueless about the boy holed up with the kidnappers at the apartment for nearly 10 days.
“It is not possible to track all people inside houses or flats. The child was from Shahdara area while the abductors are also stated to be from the same area. They had hired the flat here in Ghaziabad and kept the child. The Delhi police did not take help from us or inform us before the raid,” said H.N. Singh, senior superintendent of police, Ghaziabad.
The Class 1 student was handed over to his parents. “The police have worked hard to bring our child back to us ... We came to know at 1 am that he was rescued. According to doctors, the child has weakness and is advised rest,” the boy’s grandfather said.
“We have sent him to his maternal grandmother’s house as we have a lot of people coming to meet us,” he added.
The boy was kidnapped from Shahdara on January 25 by two masked men on a motorcycle when he was going to school with his sister around 7:30 am. The kidnappers boarded the school bus and snatched him from among 20 children after shooting the driver in the leg.
