Hyderabad: 8 held for kidnapping AJA ADS India Pvt Limited’s directors, demanding ransom

Hyderabad: The Raidurgam police of Cyberabad Police Commissionerate on Tuesday busted a gang notorious for kidnap ransom and arrested eight of its members and two others are absconding. They have been identified as Raja, a pseudo police constable and Sujan and sub-inspector of police, DIG Range Office, Kurnool.

The police said that the gang conspired with the former manager of AJA ADS India Private Limited and, in a large operation took the directors of the company as hostages and demanded huge amounts for their release.

The accused were identified as P Mahendra Kumar (38), an advocate and resident of Kadapa, and Shaik Mohammed Abdul Qadir (33), a cyber expert and Ashoknagar, Kadapa district.

The other accused are Vijay Shekhar (32), a native of Meerut, Uttar Pradesh and friend of the ex-manager of the company; A Ranjith Kumar (47), a resident of Secunderabad and a former employee of the company; B Rahul (33), a native of Visakhapatnam and advocate; D Subba Krishna (40), a native of Mydukur, Kadapa district; P Sandeep Kumar (31), a resident of Kurnool district and the person posing as the inspector, CBCID and B Raghu Raju (33), a native of Ramachandrapuram, East Godavari district, the person posing as a police constable.

Case details

AJA ADS India Private Limited company operates US IT recruiting and IT support and they have 40+ employees working in the company. The accused Mahendra, an advocate, conspired with Ranjith, a former employee and hatched a plan to kidnap the company directors and ask for ransom.

Mahendra discussed this issue with one of his well-known police officers, Sujan, SI, Kurnool, DIG Office. The SI advised Mahendra to first verify the office operations physically for planning. Further, Sujan also introduced Qadir, who is a cyber expert and, with that acquaintance with the police, he created a fake police identity card and called himself an assistant investigation officer, Cyber Crimes.

Sujan also set Quadir’s fee at Rs 15 lakh. Later, Mahendra hatched a plan to raid the company office with a gang. On January 26, Mahendra along with Quadir, Sandeep, Raghuraj and Raja entered the complainant Darshan Sugunakara Shetty’s office by introducing themselves as police officers of CBCID.

The gang asked employees to stop the work and started taking pictures and videos of them went to the server room turned off the power supply to the systems and removed the DVR of the CCTVs of the company. When Shetty asked for their identity, Quadir showed his ID card on the phone on which the officer’s name was Shaik Mohammed Abdul Qadir, assistant investigation officer, CID Cyber Crimes, Government of Andhra Pradesh, Police Department.

Two of them in the gang had taken the director into his cabin and asked him to cooperate with the police and stated that the MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) had received a complaint from US officials. Mahendra demanded the director to settle the issue by paying Rs 10 crores. In negotiations, Shetty agreed to pay Rs 2.3 crores for the sake of his employees’ lives and the company’s reputation.

But with limited time, Shetty was only able to arrange Rs 71.80 lakhs. After the amounts were credited to their accounts, they left all the employees and took three of them (Darshan, Hari Prasad and Chetan) by taking photographs and personal details of the employees.

Thereafter, the accused took all three employees into their vehicles and took them to a hotel in Madhapur confined them in a locked room and threatened to kill them if they failed to pay the remaining amount.

Further, the accused took all ATM cards with bank credentials from the hostages and withdrew Rs 2.5 lakhs through the ATM and Rs 10 lakh of online bank transfers to their multiple accounts. When the directors did not respond to the remaining amounts, the accused got suspicious and fled the spot by leaving all the hostages in the hotel room on January 26 evening.

“On credible information on January 28, we apprehended the accused and brought them to the police station and on systematic interrogation, the accused persons confessed their guilt of offence,” said DCP, (Madhapur Zone) G Vineeth. The DCP said that four cars, 16 mobile phones and Rs 35,000 cash were seized from the accused gang. He also commended the officials for nabbing the notorious ransom kidnap gang.