Years after release in kidnap case, two yet to know grounds for arrest

Hyderabad: Two persons, who were arrested by SR Nagar police in 2015 for allegedly plotting to kidnap a cardiologist and were set free by the court, are yet to understand why they were named as accused in the case in the first place.

Having gone through the trauma and running around courts for seven years, Rajashekar, a chronic diabetic patient, says that they feel slightly relieved now. Rajashekar was arrested along with his friend Praveen Kumar. (The names of the accused have been changed).

"Though the court found us not guilty, we have lost seven prime years of our life," a teary-eyed Rajashekar told DC.

Their counsel N Shrawan Kumar said that this is one of the many such cases where innocent people are framed and harassed by police.

Recollecting the chain of events that unfolded in October 2015, he said that when they were standing on the roadside, some men picked them up and shifted to the Task force office at Secunderabad.

After two days of interrogation, they were brought to SR Nagar police station and then remanded to judicial custody. Efforts to know the reason for their detention were futile exercises.

"They did not consider it when I informed them that I was a diabetic. After much pleading, they informed my family to get my insulin dose, but by then I had almost lost consciousness and collapsed," said Rajashekar.

Coming out on bail after 20 days of judicial remand, he thought he was free. But trouble came in the form of questions and suspicions of friends and relatives, which added to his trauma. "For an entire year I could not step out of my house. Even after that I had to struggle to get work, which I secured after three years," says Rajashekar.

Shrawan Kumar says that police claimed that there was another accused who had hired them for the kidnap. While filing the charge-sheet, they informed the court that a supplementary charge-sheet would be filed once the third accused is traced.

"But even after seven years, there is no trace of him. And nobody knows anything about him," he said.

According to him the stranger part was that the existence of the doctor itself has not been proved.