3 held for abducting van cleaner

CHENNAI: The suburban police arrested three persons four hours after they kidnapped the cleaner of a tempo along with the vehicle and stole barrels of diesel worth Rs 2.5 lakh kept in it, at Porur on Wednesday.The arrested men Sridhar (37), a tempo driver from Thiruvottriyur, Ramkumar (19), a mechanic from Sembium and Karthik (25) of Porur had regularly watched the tempo ferrying diesel and decided to smuggle it.On Wednesday, police received information from a tempo driver Umapathy of Nandambakkam that three persons had beaten him up and kidnapped his cleaner Karthikeyan along with his vehicle at Mount-Poonamallee Road. The cops  also received information that the stolen  tempo had barrels of diesel worth Rs 2.5 lakh that was being transported from Ambattur to an  IT company in Thiruvanmiyur. Further, the three persons were reportedly driving a similar tempo and deliberately rammed their vehicle into his tempo before beating him up.As police began their probe, the cleaner Karthikeyan had called Umapathy from a public phone booth and told him that he was pushed out of the tempo at Koyambedu and the three persons had fled with the diesel after snatching his mobile phone. He also informed that the vehicle was moving towards Padi.The police then alerted the control room. “When we heard that the vehicle was moving towards Padi, we thought they would cross Madhavaram and alerted all cops on night rounds,” said a police officer. The inspectors on night rounds caught the vehicle near a hospital at Madhavaram and nabbed the men. They confessed to cops that they had pushed out Karthikeyan from the tempo and snatched his phone fearing he would inform police. They also said that they had been watching the tempo transporting diesel and decided to smuggle and sell it. Both the tempo and diesel - worth about Rs 6.5 lakh were recovered.