Prashanth, a flower seller at Hyderabad’s Gudimalkapur market, stepped out of his house in the afternoon of February 5 but never returned home. Concerned, his mother Ushanamma tried calling him, but the call didn’t connect as the phone was switched off. After frantically searching for her younger son for a day, her older son Anjanelyalu received a WhatsApp call from Prashanth’s number, but another voice spoke, saying that Prashanth had been kidnapped and demanded a ransom of Rs 50,000 to release him. When Ushanamma approached the police to file a complaint, the police discovered a string of such kidnappings. And connecting them all was the popular Spanish Netflix show, Money Heist.
According to Hyderabad police, the accused, 27-year-old Suresh, was inspired by the main character of Money Heist — the Professor — who would recruit people to carry out crimes. In a statement, the police said that Suresh had recruited four others, including a woman, to abduct people from their known circles and demand ransom. The gang would identify their victim, and the woman would send messages to them on social media, asking them to meet her at a particular location.
When the victim reached the spot, the gang would kidnap them in a second-hand Mitsubishi Pajero car that Suresh had purchased. The gang would wear masks to hide their identities just like in Money Heist, the police said. They would then use the victims’ phones to call their families and demand money from them. According to The New Indian Express, the ransom amount ranged from Rs 50,000, like in Prashanth’s case, to as high as Rs 8 lakh. Once they received the money, they would threaten to kill the victim if they complained to the police and would release them. The police said that the gang was involved in six such kidnappings.
According to the police statement, most of the gang’s victims were women. However, when Ushanamma reported that her son was missing, the police launched an investigation into the matter and uncovered the kidnapping and extortion racket. The five accused — including Suresh and Rohit, Induri Jagadish, Kunal and Swetha Chary — have been booked under Section 364(a) (Kidnapping or abduction for ransom) of the Indian Penal Code.