Among 10 held for kidnapping Noida trader—pilot and son of teacher

The development comes 18 days after Kapil Gupta,owner of Delta Electronics was released on September 24 by his abductors after his wife Sonia paid them the ransom amount without informing police.

The arrested persons,apprehended from Meerut,have been identified as Anshul Babra,Vinay Kumar,Sandeep Kumar,Sandeep Rathi,Kapil,Deepak,Somvir,Anshul,Pushpendra and Sanjeev.

Police said that the mastermind of the kidnapping plot was Anshul Babra,a resident of Shraddha Puri in Meerut,who is the son of an award winning school teacher.

“Anshul’s father,Mahendra Singh Babra,was the recipient of the 2009 Rajya Shikshak Puruskar. Another person arrested,Vinay Kumar,is a trained pilot,” an official said.

The arrests took place after police got a tip-off on October that the accused were in Meerut. On October 11,police raided the home of Vinay Kumar,the trained pilot,in Dabthua village in Meerut and arrested him.

“At his home we recovered the ransom money which was still kept in bags. Some arms and ammunition was also recovered from his possession,” an official said.

His interrogation revealed that Anshul Babra was the man who planned the kidnapping,leading to his arrest from his house in Shraddhapur Phase 2.

Kapil Gupta was kidnapped while driving home from the DND flyover on September 21. On September 23,without informing police,Gupta’s wife Sonia paid the Rs 5 crore ransom at a location at Daurala near the Meerut bypass. Gupta returned home on September 24,after which the police began a detailed investigation.

Jyoti Narayan,Senior Superintendent of Police,Gautam Buddh Nagar,said,“The kidnappers took Gupta to Greater Noida and kept him there. We are looking into certain claims that the abductors were informed of police movements regularly. We are also trying to find out if these were the same people who abducted Saurabh Jain,a chartered accountant with the same company,for a 25 lakh ransom in February 2010.”

A case under section 364(A) (kidnapping for ransom) has been registered against the accused in the Sector 20 police station.