Missing Dhanbad boy returns home,says was not abducted

“Naresh first told us Vicky was at Dhanbad railway station. When we couldn’t find him,his family said my son had been sent to a biscuit factory in Ranchi. Naresh had disappeared by then,” Kajal told The Indian Express.

The police were reluctant to agree to the demand but their hand was forced by politicians who even sat on hunger strikes in Dhanbad and Topchachi. “We had begun to suspect the boy had left on his own but the politicians were not in a mood to listen. We had named the accused in the FIR. So we picked up Ramdhani’s son Saroj on January 6,” a policeman said.

The other accused,including Ramdhani’s brother-in-law Karu Das who has since been bailed out,surrendered in court a few days later.

Then,nearly five months later on June 3,Vicky returned. “He told us he had left after a fight with his parents. He had Naresh cycle him to Katras railway station,from where he went to Bangalore,” the policeman said.

In Bangalore,he found work as a waiter at Amulya Bar and Restaurant,Vicky claimed. “I worked for six months but was not paid. One of our customers was a student from Dhanbad. I told him of my misery. I didn’t have any money so he bought me a ticket home,” he said.

The police then moved court. “We obtained the court’s permission to re-open the case based on his statement that he was not abducted,” Dhanbad SP Anoop T Mathew said.

If that wasn’t twist enough,Vicky has now again changed his statement. “Naresh had been pestering me to go to Bangalore for a job he had arranged. That morning,Naresh offered me a lift on his cycle. Next thing I know,he put a handkerchief over my face,” he said at a meeting at Dhanbad district court premises. “I woke four days later in a train at the Bangalore railway station.”

The accused maintain they are innocent and Kajal is out to settle personal scores. “One of Kajal’s relatives owed me one lakh rupees. He had also borrowed my car and damaged it so I demanded compensation. On December 28,he told me to reach the police station. I assumed it was for negotiating these debts. But there,I saw my relatives and I was named in the FIR,” he said.

Ramdhani’s wife has also filed an FIR,alleging that Kajal and at least six other men attacked her on June 5 and tried to burn down her house.