Like all teenagers, Adnan Patrawala loved his nights out. And coming from an affluent family, he had a lot of those. On August 18, he was at his favourite hangout, the pool table at the Inorbit Mall in Malad, when he realised around midnight that he had to inform his parents he would be late. I will not be able to come tonight, he phoned his parents.Little did he or his parents know that “tonight” would stretch into eternity.Having played a few rounds of pool with his friends at the Mumbai mall, the 16-year-old son of a businessman got into his Skoda Octavia with his friends and drove towards Kandivli. On the way, he was overpowered by his companions and secreted away.The next day, on Sunday, Patrawala’s tense household at upmarket Lokhandwala got a phone call. “Your son is with us,” said the voice at the other end. “We have kidnapped him and if you do not part with Rs 2 crore, you will have to repent.”On Monday, Adnan’s body was found among some bushes along Palm Beach Road in Navi Mumbai, a Mumbai suburb. The police said he appeared to have been strangled.Adnan was a very impressionable youngster and came from an affluent family. Like most youngsters his age, he liked to live life on the fast lane. When he took his father’s Skoda for a spin, he raced it on the Mumbai Expressway at nothing less than 180 kmph. And like all young people do these days, the Class XII student at Children Welfare Centre College at Versova spent time on the Internet, particular on Orkut, the social networking site.All the kidnappers who befriended him had stumbled onto him through Orkut and at Timezone, a gaming parlour in the Inorbit Mall in Malad in northwest Mumbai. Timezone like most gaming parlours has a go-karting rink, dashing cars, skating rink, pool tables and video games. Adnan loved pool and would often spend time with the cue stick in his hand, challenging his rivals to friendly duels.The second of a rich businessman’s three children, Adnan was an average student. “I love mobiles, friends, my mother, fast driving, humorous, good looking, wanna become a pilot,” said his profile on Orkut.With the arrest of five young men, two of them teenagers like Adnan, the police were able to piece the puzzle, somewhat. The police said the accused — Himesh Ambawat (18), Sujit Nair (28), Ayush Bhatt (19), Rajeev Dharia (24) and Lallan Singh (23) — had admitted that they panicked when they saw the news of the kidnapping on TV and killed Adnan. “They got scared after they came to know on Sunday that the police were after them and strangled the boy,” said Additional Commissioner of Police (western region) Archana Tyagi.So what went wrong? Was the media coverage untimely? When a kidnapping case is reported to the police, it is relayed to the regional control room from the local police station. The regional control room in turn sends the message to the main control room in the police headquarters in South Mumbai.At the control room, the process of disseminating the message begins with the Assistant Commissioner of Police, control, passing the message to senior police officers. In the process, at least 15 to 20 people are privy to the information in a span of, say, 10 minutes. In the case of Adnan who was killed late on the night of August 19, the news was leaked. A television channel got the details and a photograph of the boy.The story on television channels changed the fate of the strapping collegian. Nair was alerted when someone called him about Adnan’s kidnapping being on TV. The media was blamed for causing the kidnappers to panic, though the cops are now determined that the kidnappers had planned the murder of Adnan a week before the incident. The cops found a rope in the car which was apparently used to strangulate Adnan.The Adnan case has forced the Mumbai police to plan changes in the kidnapping drill, that is, keep details under wraps, with only a handful of senior officers kept in the loop. This is the drill the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) follows in case of high-profile kidnappings in the United States. “We will definitely develop such a plan,” says JCP (law and order) K.L. Prasad, who is heading the investigation into Adnan’s murder.The Adnan kidnapping has also made the Mumbai police think about kidnapping as a new form of crime that might plague the city. Economic boom has created multiplexes and malls that has forever changed the definition of entertainment for the youth in Mumbai. In malls, the rich rub shoulders with wannabes like Nair, who met Adnan at Timezone in Inorbit. Adnan, at 16, had access to his father’s Skoda; Nair could not even afford a motorbike.No wonder kidnapping is on the rise in Mumbai. Only a few months ago, Mumbai was shaken with the news of Nadeem Lakdawalla’s kidnapping from the busy bylanes of Bandra. Nadeem was picked up by five unidentified men from Bandra in a Maruti Zen and his father Parvez Lakdawalla had received a call demanding a ransom of Rs 1 crore. Fortunately, Nadeem was released the next day at Powai and returned home unharmed. The police arrested five men for Nadeem’s abduction. Adnan was not as lucky.
