By IANS
Mumbai : The Mumbai police late Monday arrested three friends of slain 16-year-old Adnan Patrawala, the son of a businessman, hours after they found his body dumped in a car in a suburb and are probing how the victim met the three though the social networking website Orkut.
Police said they had arrested Adnan’s friends Sujith Nair, Aayush Bhat and Himesh Ambavat for strangulating and killing him.
“Preliminary investigations have revealed that Adnan had met the trio through the social networking site Orkut and we are probing into the identity of a person called Angel, whom the trio had promised to introduce to Adnan,” said a senior police official.
“We are working on certain leads. What looked like an abduction and extortion case could have other angles, which we do not rule out,” the official told IANS.
“The trio has been taken into custody.”
Adnan was kidnapped from the up-market Lokhandwala Complex in suburban Mumbai’s Andheri Saturday night.
Aarif Patrawala, Adnan’s father who has an air-conditioning business, had Sunday registered a case of kidnapping with the Oshiwara police saying that the family had received a ransom call from the alleged kidnappers demanding Rs.20 million.
The police recovered Adnan’s body, bearing strangulation marks, in an abandoned car on the deserted beachfront Palm Beach Road in Navi Mumbai in the city’s northern suburb that connects Vashi to Belapur in Navi Mumbai late Monday.
“We are working on some definite leads, but it is too early to say anything,” Additional Commissioner of Police (west region) Archana Tyagi told IANS Monday evening.
Recounting the events, Tyagi said Adnan had left home Saturday at 11 p.m. after receiving a call from a friend. He called up his home later to say that he would stay over with some friends and was busy playing pool.
“But the next morning the Patrawalas received a call from an unidentified person who claimed to have abducted the boy and demanded ransom,” the official said.
Initially, the Patrawalas had thought that the ransom call was a prank but when they received a second call Sunday noon they registered a case of kidnapping with the police.
Adnan’s body has been sent to a hospital in Navi Mumbai for post mortem, police said.
This is the second case this year in which the son of a businessman was abducted.
In April, Nadeem, a 16-year-old son of builder Parvez Lakdawala, was kidnapped from suburban Bandra. The abductors had demanded Rs.10 million as ransom for his release.
Nadeem was however released that same night from the north-central suburb of Powai. The police arrested four people, including Zara, a girl Nadeem was friendly with.
The police had shot another accused in the case, Imran Radiowala, on July 19.