Pune: The Market Yard police have arrested a minibus fleet operator and an autorickshaw driver on charges of abducting and assaulting a bicycle storeowner's jobless son (29) from his Salisbury Park home on Thursday night to recover the money he had taken as loan and lost in cricket betting three years ago. The police are searching for two others in the case. The victim told the police that the gang threatened him with a firearm and demanded Rs5 crore before letting him off early Friday morning at a spot on Satara Road with a threat that they would return to his residence to collect the money.
The victim and his father, who runs a bicycle store in Shirur, about 70km from Pune off the highway to Ahmednagar, informed the police about the incident. Two of the abductors went to the victim's house to collect the money around 9.30am on Friday, and the police nabbed them.
"We arrested Yogesh Jadhav (30) and Avinash Jadhav (51) from the doorstep of the victim's house," senior inspector Maya Devare of the Market Yard police said. Yogesh is a resident of Dhankawadi and Avinash stays in Navi Peth, the police said. "We will be able to comment more on the Rs5-crore demand once we arrest the remaining two men, who are among the people who had lent money to the victim three years ago," the officer said.
For now, a case for offences under sections 308 ( extortion ), 137 ( abduction ) and 115 (voluntarily causing hurt) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), and under the provision of the Arms Act has been registered. No firearm has been recovered so far from the arrested men, the police said. Devare said, "The victim was into cricket betting three years ago and had then borrowed huge amounts from various people.
After losing money in this activity, he was unable to repay the loans and the lenders were after him to get back their money. Some of these lenders got together to plot his abduction to recover the money." The officer cited the FIR and said two men reached the victim's house in Salisbury Park in a car on Thursday night.
They called him on his cellphone and told him to join them in a meeting. When the victim reached their car, they bundled him into it and drove to a spot near Navale bridge, where the two other men got into the four-wheeler. The four men then drove up to the Kiwale exit point along the Katraj-Dehu Road bypass, slapping and threatening the victim and demanding money.
Later, they took a U-turn and dropped the victim at a spot on Satara Road. The victim then called his father, who went there on a scooter to pick him up, Devare said..
