Girl stages own abduction to repay loan taken from dad with ransom amount

A 20-year-old engineering student from a renowned IT institute in Noida allegedly hatched a conspiracy of her own abduction on Friday.

The woman, Muskan Agarwal, allegedly planned the kidnapping along with three of her male friends, aged 20-24 years and forced her father to transfer ₹10 lakh to her account as ‘ransom’. However, the plan went awry as the Uttar Pradesh special task force was roped in and the plot was busted.

On Friday afternoon, when Muskan’s father Shiv Agarwal called her up around 2.50pm from Kanpur, he heard several people entering her room and his daughter shouting for help. She was in her college hostel at that time. The phone was disconnected and soon he received two SMSes from Muskan’s mobile phone. The sender had asked for ₹10 lakh ‘ransom’ to be transferred to his daughter’s account immediately.

“Agarwal transferred₹10 lakh from his bank in Kanpur to Muskan’s account,” said RK Mishra, deputy superintendent of police, UP-STF.

Meanwhile, the Noida police was also alerted. After the transfer, three transactions took place from the woman’s account at ICICI Bank in Noida and the cops became suspicious after some amount was transferred to Muskan’s e-wallet account.

“When the STF teams reached the bank, three transactions had been made from the ATM and two suspects — P Anant and Rituraj Singh — had left. But, they were spotted in the CCTV footage. The woman, along with her boyfriend Aditya Srivastava, was traced to a park in Pari Chowk. Srivastava is Agarwal’s neighbour in Kanpur and had completed his engineering from Noida. Upon questioning, the identity of the other two men, who had withdrawn the money, was also revealed,” Mishra added.

Both Anant and Singh were nabbed while they were having pizza at Jagat Farm market. During questioning, Muskan revealed that she had lent ₹4 lakh to another friend who studies in Noida and her father was pressurising her to get the money back.

STF sources said Muskan had also eloped with her boyfriend a month ago and her father had been angry with her. With her studies also not going well, Aggarwal wanted his daughter to return to Kanpur. The woman and her friends allegedly planned the entire conspiracy to get her

CONTINUED ON P 5

DURING QUESTIONING, MUSKAN REVEALED SHE HAD LENT ₹4 LAKH TO A FRIEND AND HER FATHER WAS ASKING HER TO GET IT BACK