Mukesh Kumar had reportedly alighted from a train at Rajpura early this morning. Later some of his relatives there informed his parents and brought him to his home here.

Since Mukesh Kumar, who studies in Class VIII, was not available to narrate the story, his father, Satpal, who runs a flour mill in Arya Samaj area, told Newsline the sequence of events after the boy went missing.

He said his son told him on his return that when he was going to his shop he was asked by the occupants of a parked jeep near Sirhindi Gate to push the jeep as its engine would not start. As he helped the occupants, he was dragged into the vehicle and a piece of cloth was put on his mouth.

When he regained consciousness the next morning he found himself in a room of a farm house somewhere on the outskirts of Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh (he gathered this from the conversation of his abductors). He said more boys like him were lodged in other rooms at the same place.

Satpal said the alleged kidnappers telephoned his shop twice on Monday. They also made Mukesh come on the line and tell his kin that he was well. The culprits told Mukesh's brother that they would contact him after two days. They refused to spell out their demands or disclose the place that they were calling from. The call could not be traced though there was a caller identification machine installed with his telephone set. This raised suspicion that the callers had used a sophisticated telephone set.

Mukesh told his parents that he managed to sneak into the jeep of his kidnappers on Tuesday night when they were going out to a dhaba. He hid himself under the backseat of the jeep and while they were having dinner he managed to escape. He walked for four to five hours and reached the Saharanpur railway station from where he boarded a train for Ambala. From there he reached Rajpura. He reportedly travelled without ticket and informed his relatives at Rajpura about his arrival at the railway station.

Mukesh's family lodged a complaint on Monday about the kidnapping with the city police. Senior police officers were not available during the day as they were reported to be busy in a meeting. Later tonight a senior police officer said that he had just come to know that the boy had returned home. However he said that this was not a case of kidnapping and the boy had gone out on his own. He said that two of the persons with whom Mukesh had gone had also been identified. He also pointed out that there were certain contradictions in the statements given by the boy to his father and to the police.

The police officer could not say what action the police had taken during the last two days after registration of the FIR adding that they were waiting for leads to come their way.

It is significant to mention that another teenaged boy was reportedly kidnapped from the city a few months back but the police have failed to make any headway so far. The boy belongs to a well known cloth merchant of the city and his whereabouts are still not known. The Maruti car that he was driving was found abandoned near Panchayat Bhawan.