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Journalism of Courage
After kidnapping three Class VI students of Bishop Cotton School (BCS) in Shimla, 43-year-old suspect Sumit Sood on Saturday made calls through a virtual number to their parents, acting as if he was forced to make ransom calls and demanded the money to be paid in Bitcoin for the safe release of the children, Shimla police sources said on Tuesday.
Police sources said the parents of two students answered the calls, and one of them recorded the conversation with Sood, purportedly claiming that “a gang of Nigerian citizens was behind the kidnapping and warning them not to inform anyone, especially the school management, otherwise the gang members would harm the children and him.”
Police said Sood, a BCS alumnus, disclosed during his interrogation that he had initially planned to abduct some other student, but dropped the idea after seeing that the student was well-built.
Shimla Superintendent of Police (SP) Sanjeev Gandhi told The Indian Express, “The virtual calls were made through the TextMe app. The suspect wanted the ransom money to be paid in Bitcoin. The examination of Sood’s cell phone suggests that he searched and scrolled more than three dozen websites, local news channels, and the BCS website to check whether the news of abduction had spread. Around 8 pm on Saturday, when he learnt about reports of the missing students that had surfaced, he planned to shift them from his Kokunala village to Chandigarh.”
“Sood had kept the students at his three-storey house in Kokunala due to its remote location. No one was at the house when he brought them there. Before committing the crime, Sood stole his father’s licensed pistol. The night before, he stayed at his maternal grandparents’ home in Shimla’s Ram Bazar. He avoided CCTV by taking the Bemloi-New Shimla road and waited for more than four hours in his car, with a fake number plate, parked about 100 metres from the school gate. He even urinated in a bottle inside the car,” Gandhi added.
Police said Sood dropped his plan to abduct another student due to the latter’s sturdy build.
“During his interrogation,” according to police, “Sood told investigators that the March fire destroyed about 1,200 apple trees in his orchard, causing huge losses. Besides, he incurred a loss of Rs 15 lakh in share trading.”
On Tuesday, police took Sood, currently in a two-day remand, from the boarding school to his house in Kokunala to recreate the crime scene. He will be produced before a district court on Wednesday.
Police said while recreating the crime scene, Sood identified the location near Dhalli, where he blindfolded the three students in the car, the location where he changed the registration number plate of his car and the routes he took to his house at Kokunala near Kotkhai on August 9.
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