Nagpur Cops rescue 7 held captive by armed kidnapper

NAGPUR: In a scene straight out of a Bollywood potboiler, the city police rescued seven family members held captive by an armed kidnapper on Friday afternoon.
Around 50 police personnel led by DCP (crime) Gajanan Rajmane descended on a house in Pipla Fata around 2.30pm after reports of a man pointing a Mauser gun at a builder’s family and demanding Rs50 lakh as ransom.
Armed cops surrounded the house of builder Raju Vaidya. The entire drama lasted for about three hours with the kidnapper holding seven members of the Vaidya family captive.
Roads leading to the locality were cordoned off while negotiations with the accused continued for around three hours. Eventually the accused, identified as Jitendra Bisen, was arrested and a pistol and a knife was seized.
Hudkeshwar police station’s senior police inspector (PI) PV Bhosale said there were no reports of anyone being injured in the incident.
The police were told that a man had entered Vaidya’s bungalow in Creative Cooperative Society near Pipla Fata, brandishing a pistol. There were three members of the family on the ground floor and four on the first floor when he entered.
The man kept Vaidya’s mother, brother’s wife and daughter — who were at the ground floor — hostage. They shouted, which alerted Vaidya’s wife who was at the first floor. She then locked herself in with her son and nephew upstairs.
Bhosale said, “I found all the windows of the multistorey house closed from inside and there was pin-drop silence. It was learnt that an armed youth held a girl and two other women members of the family hostage,” he said.
The accused was repeatedly waving his gun and threatening to kill them. He also had a knife. He said that he would keep the entire family hostage till he got Rs50 lakh and would shoot everyone if Vaidya failed to do so.
After this, Bisen spoke to the rest of the family members on the phone and asked for Rs50 lakh ransom. Meanwhile, the girl called her uncle Raju Vaidya. Bisen asked him to bring the money. He also threatened dire consequences if Vaidya failed to arrange the money.
Vaidya informed the cops about the incident. Soon, a police team reached there.
“We decided to lay a trap. First, the builder offered him Rs2 lakh from one of the ground floor windows. The accused was given Rs2 lakh thrice and we kept him busy, negotiating on the ransom money,” said Bhosale.
As the city police continued to divert Bisen’s attention, Rajmane, along with his team, entered the house from the second floor and rescued the four family members cooped up on the first floor. Then the cops reached the ground floor, surrounded Bisen and rescued the hostage women.
Police said Bisen has no criminal record, but his elder brother Ankit was a notorious goon and had committed several serious crimes. At present Ankit is lodged in Central Jail, police said.
Police said the ‘pistol’ recovered from Bisen was actually a cigarette lighter, and added that Bisen used to work in a catering firm and was jobless for the last one year.