Delhi Police has rescued a five-year-old kidnapped boy and arrested two people, including a woman, for allegedly planning to sell the child in Kolkata, an official said on Thursday.
The accused have been identified as Ranjeet Shah alias Neeraj Beldar (29) and Kajal (29), both from Khagaria district in Bihar, and two mobile phones have been seized from them, a senior police officer said.
During interrogation, the accused confessed to kidnapping the child with the intention of selling him for easy money.
Kajal told the investigators that she conspired with Ranjeet Shah, who planned to sell the child for Rs 1 lakh by falsely claiming to be the child's parents.
Police said the accused travelled to Patna and later to Kolkata after the kidnapping, where attempts were made to sell the child, but the deal did not materialise.
They were arrested while trying to make attempts to sell the child during their onward journey, the officer said.
According to police, Asad (5) was kidnapped from his residence in Shakurpur in northwest Delhi on January 9. Police registered a case on the complaint of Asad's father, Mohd Sahid (38).
Three teams were constituted to crack the case, the officer said. While scanning CCTV camera footage from the area, police noticed a woman suspect moving with the child and repeatedly making phone calls.
Further investigation helped police identify the person she was in contact with as Ranjeet Shah, whose location was traced to Khagaria in Bihar, the officer said.
A team was dispatched to Khagaria, which arrested Ranjeet Shah from a moving bus.
Meanwhile, call detail records and technical inputs suggested that the woman accused was travelling by train with the child.
Accordingly, a team was sent to the Kanpur Central railway station, which found that the woman and the child were on board the Vaishali Express.
The woman was finally arrested, and the child rescued, in a coordinated operation when the train reached the Tundla railway station in Uttar Pradesh, police said.
The successful operation was the result of sustained efforts involving CCTV footage analysis, technical surveillance and interstate coordination across Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, the officer said.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
