Kidnappers Murder Child By Crushing His Head With Stone After Father Approaches Cops

A 10-year-old kidnap victim has been brutally murdered by his captors after his terrified father approached the police. The abductors had allegedly phoned his father to ask for a huge ransom.

The child, Asif Aslam, was taken from his home in the Indian city of Bengaluru on June 3, Deccan Herald reported.

The men then contacted the child's father, Mohammed Abbas, a businessman, and asked for Rs 25 lakh ($34,350) as a ransom for the boy's life. The father, however, approached the police and registered a child missing complaint.

A case was registered and a lookout notice was issued for the child. A hunt was also launched for three men who were suspected to be the kidnappers.

The suspects had, by then, moved the boy to the nearby town of Jigani. They soon learned that the father had been in contact with the police. Hearing about the investigation, the kidnappers panicked and decided to kill the child and leave the state, police said.

They murdered the boy by crushing his head with a stone before fleeing to their home state of Chhattisgarh -- a heavily forested state in central India, hoping to escape the police net.

However, the officials traced their movement from their mobile phone location and realized that they had crossed the border to the town of Raipur, the capital city of Chhattisgarh. Authorities got in touch with Raipur police and soon zeroed in on the suspects.

Police identified the three men as Mohammed Rizwan, Mohammed Siraj and Mohammed Naushad. They were arrested soon and charged with murder and kidnapping.

Authorities said the men had come to Bengaluru looking for work and were in desperate need of money. Hence, they hatched the plan to kidnap the child, eyeing the huge sum they would receive as ransom.

The suspects were later produced before a local court and brought to Bengaluru for further investigation.

Last month, a two-year-old boy, who had been kidnapped from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, was rescued after police identified a suspect with the help of CCTV cameras. The suspect had allegedly abducted the child after spotting him playing alone under a tree. The boy's mother had just stepped away for a bit when the incident took place.

According to a National Crime Records Bureau report published in 2020, one child goes missing every eight minutes in India. Many are trafficked as part of a nationwide trade, authorities said.