Man held for kidnapping engineering girl student

CHENNAI: The suburban police on Thursday nabbed a 30-year-old man, accused of befriending an engineering student over phone and later kidnapping her for a ransom of Rs 5 lakh. Police said the man named four girls whom he befriended over phone earlier and had extorted gold jewellery and thousands of rupees after reportedly threatening them. He spent the spoils in luxurious vacations. With 25 SIM cards reportedly being found with the abductor, police suspect he could have cheated more girls.Acting on a tip-off, the suburban police nabbed Prabhu (30), a diploma-holder in Automobile Engineering hailing from Sathyamangalam, near the Koyambedu bus terminus.He was the main accused in the kidnap of a 19-year-old engineering student from Puducherry, who was studying in a college in Poonamallee, last month. Police had rescued the girl from Kollegal in Karnataka. On June 17, Prabhu’s friend Siva alias Sivakumar (30) of Sathyamangalam, Erode, was arrested in this connection. After preliminary interrogation, police said that Prabhu earlier ran a cellphone store.The man reportedly told police the name of the four girls he befriended and later extorted valuables and cash from them. Prabhu would either give a missed call on his victims’ numbers or send them text messages in a bid to befriend them.Later, he would extort gold jewellery and thousands of rupees in cash. He would then spend the money in luxurious vacations in hill stations like Kodaikanal, Mysore and Ooty. “At times, he had even taken the girls separately when he had gone on vacations,” a police official said. Once he felt that he had had enough from the girls; he would change his SIM card. “He is like, what we call, Manmadan (Cupid). He looks smart and can speak good English that had perhaps attracted many girls. We suspect there could be more girls in his list apart from the ones he revealed to us,” said a senior police official, not willing to be named.The police team that camped in Sathyamangalam for over a month to nab the accused also observed that there were many young men in the area who operated like Prabhu to extort money from young girls. “We observed this trend when we were there for more than a month. The girls too seem to cooperate and like to hang around with such men before they go for an arranged marriage. The world has changed,” added a police official.