Following the failed payment of ransom, Police in Gombe have apprehended a suspected kidnapper.
Suspect, Mohammed Ahmed
A 19-year-old suspected kidnapper, Mohammed Ahmed, of the Gabukka Quarter, Gombe metropolis, has been arrested for allegedly abducting seven-year-old Hassan Abubakar of the Kumbiya-Kumbiya Quarter.
The suspect was arrested after posing as a good Samaritan returning the boy, who had gone missing for three days.
Trouble started for the suspect when the father of the victim called his bluff by refusing to pay the N3m ransom demanded.
While parading the suspect before newsmen in Gombe on Thursday, the state Police Public Relations Officer, SP Mary Malum, narrated what transpired.
She said, “Ahmed went to the Kumbiya-Kumbiya Quarter in Gombe, where he saw the victim performing ablution in a mosque and sent him to buy sachet water for him; while on the way, he followed the boy and picked him on a motorcycle and took him to his house.
“He hid the victim for two days and thereafter demanded ransom of N3.5m from the father of the victim before he could be released. When he saw that the ransom was not forthcoming, Ahmed decided to call one Aminu Babayo, the uncle to the victim, and told him that he had seen the boy abandoned at the Gabukka Quarter.
“Aminu pleaded with him to bring the victim to his grandfather’s house at the Gabukka Quarter in order to be appreciated. While the relatives were still jubilant, the victim’s father observed that the mobile telephone number used in demanding the ransom was the same used in calling the victim’s uncle immediately alerted SARS operatives, who arrested the suspect.”
She added that investigation into the matter was ongoing and the suspect would be charged as soon as it was concluded.