Hyderabad: The Banjara Hills police on Friday arrested a four-member gang, including a lawyer from Tamil Nadu, who allegedly kidnapped a makeup artist and rescued the victim.
The arrested persons were V Kumara Guru (32) a lawyer, P Lokesh Kumar (31), S Jagadish (32) and PK Ganesh Kumar (30), a junior artiste from Chennai. The prime suspect in the case Pradeep Natarajan (30), a production manager from Chennai and Keerthana alias Madhu (25) a junior artiste, also from Chennai, are absconding.
According to the police, the victim K Amarnath Reddy, a make-up artist and production manager in the Telugu film industry, had earlier approached Natarajan, Guru and Lokesh Kumar, his friends in Chennai to settle a financial matter of Rs 13.5 lakh he had with three others. He promised Rs 4 lakh as commission. A complaint was also lodged with the Bengaluru police.
“Recently, with the help of the Bengaluru police, Rs 10 lakh was recovered and the amount was deposited in court by the police. Amarnath Reddy received the money from court, but did not give the commission and left Bengaluru and was avoiding the suspects since then,” Hyderabad Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar said.
The suspects contacted Reddy several times for their commission, but he gave evasive replies. On Thursday morning, Madhu contacted Reddy and telling him that they were in the city, asked him to meet her at Kavuri Hills in Madhapur.
“The moment he met Madhu, the others caught him and stripped him. They also shot a video of him threatening to post it on social media. They then took him in a car to the Mahavir Harina Vanasthali National Park and calling his wife Kalpana, demanded Rs 4 lakh as ransom,” the Commissioner said.
Based on a complaint from Kalpana, the Banjara Hills police booked a kidnap case. The police then arranged cash and sent photos of the money from Kalpana’s phone to the kidnappers, who asked her to come to a secluded location at Srinagar Colony with the cash.
There, the police caught one of the suspects, and on interrogating him, learned that Reddy was being taken in a car to Chennai via Nalgonda. The City Police then alerted the Nalgonda police, who intercepted the car and rescued Reddy.
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