Engineer stages his own kidnapping after losing money in cyptocurrency

Lucknow, July 4 A 25-year-old engineer allegedly staged his own kidnapping to extort money from his family after suffering losses in crypto-trading.

Naman Kumar,aman, who works for an IT company, allegedly posed as the "kidnapper" and called his parents through different voice modulation apps to threaten them.

According to police, they received a complaint from Naman’s family on Monday afternoon. Naman’s mother Twinkle complained that her son had been kidnapped from near KGMU and that they received multiple extortion calls and messages for Rs 20 lakh from his phone.

Additional DCP West, Chiranjeev Nath Sinha said, “We went through the messages and calls. The caller was trying to extort Rs 20 lakh and using WhatsApp to communicate. The police team went to the family’s house and analysed multiple CCTV cameras. We found that the man was repeatedly saying that your son will face the same fate of ‘Viren’ who was kidnapped long ago in Rohtas district of Bihar and never returned,” said Sinha.

The ADCP said that learnt that the person who has been kidnapped is an acquaintance of the family or a near one as he knows that the family hailed from Bihar.

“In the meantime, the technical surveillance led us to the Amausi airport and we checked the CCTVs in which Naman was spotted landing at the Amausi airport at 10 a.m and then visiting his friends in between,” said Sinha.

Further, the technical team tracked the location of the mobile phone of Naman in Naka Hindola area following which an alert was sounded and around 250 hotels were checked by six teams of cops in civvies without creating a scare.

“We found Naman Kumar in Vimal residency in thePandariba area of Charbagh,” said ADCP.

Sinha said when he examined him, he confessed to having staged his own kidnapping as he was in a financial crisis. “Naman Kumar had recently lost money by investing in bitcoins and owed Rs 54 lakh to many of his acquaintances. He had asked others for help, but they had refused.

He then hatched the "kidnapping" plan to extort money from the family as they were planning the marriage of his uncle’s daughter,” said Sinha.

--IANS