The Kanpur police have arrested four youths for the murder of Zia-ud-din alias Ali (18) who was kidnapped from Govind Nagar on November 5. According to the police, the four confessed to the murder and said they hid the body under a hedge on the Lucknow-Kanpur highway in Unnao. The police, however, failed to find the body even as they recovered a knife and some clothes from the spot.

The youths — Kamal, Arvind, Babblo and Tannu —told police that they had killed Ali on November 5. Two days later, they called up his father Salla-ud-din for a ransom of Rs 5 lakh.

A resident of Govind Nagar Kachchi Basti, Ali was a student of JK Industrial Training Centre. On the afternoon of November 5, he left home and failed to return. The next day, his father lodged a complaint with the police. On November 7, after he got the ransom call, the case was formally registered as a kidnapping.

An examiner in the Field Gun Factory, Salla-ud-din said on the day of Dusshera, September 28, Ali had an argument with some people when he went to a nearby park along with some friends, to watch the Ramlila.

“Later in the night, Kamal, along with about 15 youths, barged into our house and threatened to kill Ali,” said Salla-ud-din. On October 23, he received a call from an anonymous person who threatened to harm Ali if he did not mend his ways.

After Ali went missing, the family received three ransom calls on November 7, “all from the same mobile number, and the caller demanded Rs 5 lakh,” he said. The police later arrested the four suspects.

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