Kidnapped boy murdered: Two kidnappers killed in police action

Senior Superintendent of Police at the Metropolitan Crime Division, Dhiraj Pratap Singh, said that two kidnappers, who abducted and murdered the boy, were also killed in police encounter at Suryabinayak jungle, Bhaktapur.

The kidnappers—Ajay Tamang, 24, of Nuwakot district, and Gopal Tamang of Sindhupalchowk district, were killed in police encounter. A team under the leadership of Deputy Superintendent of Police, Rugam Kunwar, from the Division was deployed in search of the kidnapped boy.

Nishan Khadka, 11, was abducted at 6:00 pm on Sunday from an eatery run by his mother, Chameli Khadka of Sindhupalchowk and he was found murdered at Madhyapurthimi municipality-7 this afternoon.

The abductors had tied the throat and stuffed a handkerchief in the mouth of the boy, police said. Separate five teams from the Division had launched a search on information that the abductors had been hiding in the Suryabinayak forest.

The fighting between the kidnappers and the police took place near the forest at the Ganesh Temple in Suryabinayak Municipality-8 leading to Pilot Baba Ashram. “The encounter between the abductors and the police took place in the forest. Upon the encounter, they (the kidnappers) opened fires at us, and two abductors were killed in retaliation,” said SSP Singh.

A pistol, two live bullets and a mobile were recovered from the incident site. Preparations were on to collect circumstantial evidence of the incident, and take the bodies of the deceased abductors to Kathmandu, said Singh.

Prior to the abduction, deceased Gopal as usual visited the restaurant run by the deceased child’s mother on that fateful day, according to the police preliminary investigations. The child was abducted at 6 pm in the evening the same day under the pretext of taking the child on an evening walk.

The family had reported the incident to the police two hours later after the child failed to return home. Although the police mounted a search for the boy since 8 pm, it came to light that he had been abducted only after the abductors called the boy’s mother over the phone two times at 9 pm demanding a ransom of Rs 4 million.

A team comprising 150 police personnel from the Kandaghari Police Sector, the Metropolitan Police Range, Bhaktapur, Metropolitan Police Circle, Thimi and Crime Division mobilised in search of the abductors in the night soon after getting information of the abduction.

The police was deployed in the Thimi Dhunchepakha and Nagadesh area this morning after getting the information that the abductors were hiding in that area. Five teams of police combed the Surya Binayak jungle area after they were tipped off that the kidnappers were hiding there.

The boy’s father, Ganesh, is in Malaysia in course of foreign employment. The boy was the sixth grader at the Highland Secondary School at local Town Planning.