The mysterious abduction of a man from Jalahalli Cross in Bengaluru has been solved by the Peenya Police: 21-year-old Maruthi simply did not want to go to work and faked his abduction on Friday!
At around 8.20 pm on Friday, Maruthi, who is from Sandur in Bellary district, called his uncle, BL Gowda and informed him that he had been abducted by four men, who had stuffed him in a car as soon as he stepped out of an ATM.
A panicked and anxious Gowda went straight to the Peenya Police Station and registered an FIR.
A complaint was registered, but when the police inspected the spot where Maruthi claimed he was abducted from, they were not convinced.
“It was on a main road that is packed with traffic at peak hours - which is when Maruthi claimed he was kidnapped. As soon as we visited the spot, we went through the CCTV footage on that street but there was no abduction that day,” said Penya Police Inspector, Iyaan Reddy.
The investigating officers then questioned the security guard manning the ATM kiosk and also the roadside vendors, who said that no such incident had occurred that day.
“That’s when we suspected that Maruthi had faked his abduction. There have been many fake abduction cases before and this one had all the indications of one,” Inspector Reddy said.
The police then started tracking Maruthi’s phone but it was switched off. On Saturday evening, Maruthi called his uncle and told him that he was safe and that he is coming back to Bengaluru.
Peenya police then tracked him down to the Kempegowda Bus Depot and brought him to the police station. He was counselled and let off with a warning.
“According to Maruthi’s parents, he was unemployed before, and fearing that he would engage in bad company, they advised him to live with his uncle in Peenya. His uncle got him a job as a mechanic at a factory there but he was always skipping work,” the Inspector said.
Upon questioning Maruthi, it was revealed that he had contemplated fleeing his uncle’s home multiple times. He had gone to work on Friday but had informed his superior that he was taking an off.
“He went to an ATM, withdrew Rs 2,500 and repaid a loan he had taken from one of his friends. He had also told his friend that he was on his way to visit his sister. Since he did not want his uncle to find out he was bunking work, he met a friend and called his uncle telling him he had been abducted,” the Inspector added.
He said that the police resources are often misused. “We take every complaint seriously. Citizens must be more mindful about how many people they set on a wild goose chase for silly reasons like this,” he said.