Chandigarh, February 17
Teenaged Prabir Singh, a Plus two student and son of a rice-sheller owner, who was kidnapped at gun point from Majitha Road in Amritsar on February 8, has been released by his captors, police sources said tonight. The car, in which Prabir was allegedly kidnapped, was found abandoned outside Saharanpur railway station.
Accompanied by his Faridabad-based maternal uncle, Prabir was expected to reach Delhi late tonight.
With his release all four major cases of kidnapping reported from the State during the past 10 days have been solved. In three of the cases, victims, including four-year-old Amandeep Singh, 13-year-old Abhi Verma and a middle-aged trader of Batala, were allegedly done to death by their captors.
While the relatives continued their negotiations with the kidnappers, suspected to be hardened criminals of western Uttar Pradesh, the police zeroed in on them this evening. It was on the request of the family that police action was deferred as kidnappers agreed to release the teenager.
Prabir is likely to reach Amritsar tomorrow to the great relief of his parents and other family members who had joined students of DAV Public School in peace marches to seek his release.
The Punjab police parties working on certain clues had enlarged their investigations to Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal and even Bihar, as they suspected that the kidnapping of Prabir was the handiwork of a professional gang.
Initial investigations reveal that people behind his kidnapping had links with notorious gangs of Pappu Yadav, Iz-ul-Haq and Mukhtiar of both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
