Man kidnaps boy to force his mother to marry him, arrested

If she refused to be with him, he had warned repeatedly that he would kidnap her son, an officer said. Now, he had made good on that threat.

Following a PCR call, a kidnapping case was lodged at the Amar Colony police station. With the child already missing for several hours, and the kidnapper planning to flee the city in all probability, police hurriedly started tracking Singh’s social media account.

Police said Singh, who sold flowers, had been messaging the woman for around a year on Instagram. “His obsession had grown… so much so that he arrived at the woman’s residence around 1 pm on October 12, seemingly to surveil their home,” said an officer.

“When the complainant spotted him, he fled immediately. But he returned hours later when the child was playing outside his home,” DCP (South East) Hemant Tiwari said.

The police, employing a combination of technical surveillance and manual intelligence work, tracked Singh’s movements, piecing together his likely escape route. “We knew he would try to leave Delhi as quickly as possible,” said an officer. “The question was whether he would go by road or rail, and in which direction.”

“The breakthrough came when the team identified Singh’s destination: his native village of Diligirdhar in Ayodhya district. More critically, they determined he was traveling by train,” the DCP said.

As Singh’s train, Suhaildev Express, pulled into Lucknow railway station, the Delhi Police team was waiting. Eight hours after the kidnapping was reported, he was arrested from the train, Tiwari added. The four-year-old boy was found with him, unharmed.

During questioning, police said Singh revealed that he kidnapped the child as leverage to force the boy’s mother into marrying him. He planned to keep him in his village until the woman gave in to his demands.

Police said Singh remains in custody, facing charges under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections.