Three people have been arrested for kidnapping and conspiring to kill a senior citizen here today, a senior police official said.
A retired branch manager of Bank of India (BoI), Abhayshankar Upadhyay (61), was kidnapped from his residence yesterday, but the city Crime Branch received a tip-off about his abductors as well as their plan to kill him.
"Police Inspector K P Patel received a tip-off that a senior bank manager had been kidnapped and confined in a flat in Vejalpur area of the city," Crime Branch Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) A K Sharma told reporters here today.
"Acting on the information, two people were arrested from the flat where they had confined Upadhyay, while another person was nabbed from the senior citizen's residence in the Jodhpur area of the city," Sharma said.
Police identified them as Balram Sukhlal, a jewellery box maker hailing from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh, Ankit Shah, a retail utensils dealer hailing from Limbdi in Surendranagar district and Dinesh Mewada, an autorickshaw driver, originally from Pali in neighbouring Rajasthan.
Sukhlal befriended Upadhyay, who retired on March 31 this year from BoI, during his frequent trips to the financial institution and took Rs 3 lakh from him, the police said.
"Yesterday afternoon, at around 3 PM, Sukhlal lured Upadhyay by saying that he would return his Rs 3 lakh," the police said, adding that Sukhlal then took the senior citizen in his vehicle to utensil dealer Ankit Shah's residence.
There, Sukhlal threatened Upadhyay that his son who studies in West Bengal and his married daughter would also be killed, the police said.
The trio demanded that Upadhyay help them get 25 kg of gold from the bank.
