Three held for kidnapping

​Hyderabad: Punjagutta police on Tuesday arrested three people for kidnapping the granddaughter of late Vijaya Rangam Naidu, the first Commissioner of Hyderabad police, for a ransom of Rs 50 lakh.

The arrested have been identified as Joseph Phillips, D Brahma Prakash and D Prakash Babu, all three residents of Secunderabad. The investigators are looking into the role of two other accused, D Nandita and Nitika Rechal Phillips, wife and daughter of Joseph Phillips respectively.

Police seized a car, gold ornaments weighing 54 grams and cash worth Rs 4.25 lakh, one passport, six blank cheques and other incriminating material from the accused. Police said that Joseph had been working as a manager at Golden Eye Investigation and Security Services owned by the 61-year-old victim R Jayanthi, granddaughter of the first Commissioner of Hyderabad Police in 1955, late Vijaya Rangam Naidu.

The victim lives with her mother and has no male support in the family. Taking this as an advantage and also having information that Jayanthi recently got Rs 9 lakh from a property, the accused masterminded the abduction of his employer, police said.

Accordingly, he discussed with other accused and gave instructions to Brahma and Babu on how to kidnap the senior citizen. Accordingly, on December 27, 2016, the duo arrived at Golden Eye office and threatened the woman saying they were task force sleuths from Vijayawada and had come to investigate a complaint against the woman and her mother of resorting to black magic, police said.

In the meantime, Joseph sent Jayanthi’s driver away on some pretext, while Brahma and Prakash forced the victim to board a Swift car and drove her towards Vijayawada. On the drive, they demanded Rs 50 lakh to release her, police said.

The woman was terrified and confused. Moreover, she felt helpless since there was no one to take care of her mother. She agreed to give the money following which her captors took her to HDFC, Begumpet branch where she was forced to transfer Rs 9 lakh to Joseph’s wife and daughter’s bank accounts, police said.

Then they drove her home and extorted gold ornaments, 6 blank cheques, one cell phone and her Passport. Again they took her to Andhra Bank, Punjagutta branch and made her transfer Rs 1 lakh to the account of Joseph’s wife.

The victim, however, did not approach the police immediately out of fear, but finally she filed a complaint as the accused had been calling and threatening her over phone for the remaining money.

Based on the complaint, a case was registered and the accused was arrested, police said adding that the complicity of the remaining accused was being probed.