It was a Telugu movie that inspired the three ‘killers’ of Abhay Modhani, a teenager from Shahinayathgunj who was kidnapped four days ago and was later found dead.
The accused, Indugugamalli Sheshu Kumar alias Sairam (20), Pondara Ravi (21) and Namburi Mohan (23), all from Andhra Pradesh, were caught by the city police after a long chase across Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha.
Hyderabad Commissioner M Mahender Reddy told a press conference that the trio who lived in a rented house in Goshamahal area were keen on acting in films and realised that they need to have dancing skills and huge money to bag roles in movies. “On March 14, the trio watched Oka Romantic Crime, a Telugu movie that revolves around chain-snatching and kidnapping. They got inspired by the movie and conspired to kidnap Abhay Modhani,” Mr. Reddy said.
On March 16 afternoon, Sairam, who earlier worked near Abhay’s house and had befriended him, went to Gyanbagh colony and waited for Abhay.
Around 5 p.m, he spotted the teenager on a two-wheeler and asked him to drop him at his room in Hindinagar, about a kilometre away from his house.
“After the teenager reached their house, they gagged him with a tape. However, they taped his nose along with mouth. A little while later the boy died due to asphyxiation.
Shocked over the turn of events, the three accused brought a big carton kept near their house and stuffed the teenager’s body into it.
They hired an auto rickshaw to go to Secunderabad and planned to take the body in the train and dump it at some place. On the way, the trio threw away Abhay’s mobile phone and abandoned the vehicle at Aghapura. Somehow, the accused wanted to extort money from the teenager’s parents.
At Secunderabad, they kept the carton at Alpha Hotel and bought two active SIM cards at a higher price from a shop keeper. They left the carton there itself and took the Narsapur Express to head to Guntur.
“After getting into the train Sairam made the first phone call to Abhay’s relative demanding a ransom of Rs. 10 crore. Later, he came down to Rs. 5 crore, by then the family had informed the police of the missing of the boy and the subsequent phone calls,” Mr. Mahender Reddy said. They threw away the SIM cards and the mobile phone at Vijayawada railway station fearing tracking by the police.
However, the police parties who were already chasing them finally caught two of them in Ichapuram in Srikakulam and one in Berhampur. The Commissioner said that the CCTVs provided the key clues to track down the killers as Seshu Kumar was captured by several cameras while driving Abhay on a scooter to his room and also other cameras till they reached Secunderabad.