Man stages kidnapping of own daughter and her 2-yr-old cousin to extort money from mother-in-law

The girls are daughters of two sisters—Sheetal Mohite, mother of the 15-year-old, and Sarika Dhasal, mother of the two-year-old. As the police launched a search for the two girls, their photos and other details were sent to all police units.

On the morning of August 30, Sarika and Sheetal’s husband Sachin Mohite said they had received a ransom call from a phone number that Sarika lost three months ago. The caller asked for a Rs 10 lakh ransom and threatened to kill the girl if the money was not given, they told the police.

The police got their first lead when the phone number used to make the ransom call was traced to an area very close to Sachin Mohite’s house in the Wagholi area on the outskirts of Pune. The police found loopholes in Mohite’s version of his whereabouts at the time of the girls’ disappearance.

“Our investigation of the several CCTV cameras in the area revealed that the girls were taken away in a car matching the description of the car that Mohite drove. The probe revealed that Mohite had taken the two girls—his own daughter and his sister-in-law’s daughter—to his home when all other family members had gathered at his mother-in-law’s house,” said Inspector Ganesh Jawadwad, in charge of the Wakad police station.

The investigation revealed that Mohite’s mother-in-law had recently sold a property and that he wanted to extort Rs 10 lakh from her, according to the police.

Mohite, who was subsequently arrested, has been remanded in police custody.