Kolkata: Five persons, all of them hailing from Panipat in Haryana, were arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir Police, with help from the Kolkata Police detective department and Pragati Maidan Police, on Saturday afternoon from inside an east Kolkata hotel for allegedly kidnapping two Jammu residents. The two Jammu youths were being held hostage in the hotel in order to extort Rs 30 lakh as ransom.Both victims,Tusher Chib and Mohinder Singh, residents of Kunjwani and Nanak Nagar in Jammu, have been rescued, said cops.According to police and court sources, the victims were promised jobs in Australia, including in cities like Sydney and Melbourne, and asked to fly down to Kolkata to complete “certain formalities”. However, once here, they were confined to a hotel room, the hotel located off Park Circus Connector close to Topsia.The case was initially registered at the Gandhi Nagar Police Station in Jammu on March 10 under Sections 318(4)/127(3)/308(2) of BNS pertaining to cheating, wrongful confinement and extortion.Among the arrested are Md Sameer Ansari (18), Prashant Ray (21), Praveen Kumar, Vanshu Mujal (21) and Sushil Ram (24), with Sameer identified as the prime accused. However, at least two others, identified as Pushpinder Singh and Ajay Kumar, both local agents back in Jammu, are still under cop scanner for their possible link to the crime.“We detained the accused and brought them to Pragati Maidan police station. During questioning, they broke down and they were put under arrest from inside the police station around 1.45 pm,” said a Kolkata Police source.The accused were produced at the Alipore court on Saturday, with J&K Police seeking their transit remand, said Alipore police court public prosecutor, Sourin Ghosal. “The accused planned and executed the crime. They tied up the victims and always played the television at high volume to mute their possible screams,” Ghosal informed the court.The J&K Police were granted transit remand of the accused by the Alipore court eventually.
