K.R. Pet: Four persons have been arrested for the kidnap of K.R. Pet Tahsildar Mahesh Chandra. Among the arrested is Railway Department Store-Keeper.

Mahesh Chandra, one of the senior Revenue officials in the State, and who was said to be facing threats from illegal stone quarry operators, was allegedly abducted on Aug. 2. He was released later, unharmed.

Following up the case, the Police have arrested 30-year-old K.N. Yogendra, a Railway Department Store-Keeper and a resident of Sheelanere village near K.R. Pet, 29-year-old S.N. Deepu alias Deepak, a resident of Sheelanere village, 31-year-old M.N. Somashekar alias Somu who is a resident of K.R. Pet Muslim Colony presently settled at Magadi in Bengaluru and 24-year-old S.S. Chandru, a resident of Sheelanere village.

The accused, covering their faces with clothes, abducted Mahesh Chandra at 10.30 pm from Chikkavaddaragudi near Bherya in K.R. Nagar. The gang took him to several abandoned places and released him at a deserted place at Malkonahalli near Tendekere in K.R. Pet. Later, the Officer managed to reach the Police Station.

Mahesh Chandra, who was earlier working as Tahsildar at K.R. Nagar, had been transferred to neighbouring K.R. Pet only a week before his kidnap.

A special team was formed under the leadership of K.R. Nagar Inspector K.K. Raghu and the accused were nabbed using their phone movements that were recorded at different cell phone towers. Interestingly, the accused, knowing well that their cell phones will be tracked, had bundled all their handsets inside a towel and had placed them near a forest area. But their luck ran out as the Police managed to round off all of them.

However, the motive behind the kidnap still remains to be ascertained. But speculations are rife that Mahesh Chandra was kidnapped only to exert pressure on the government to announce total farm loan waiver at the earliest.

The abductors were upset with the fact that the H.D. Kumaraswamy government had waived off just Rs. 2 lakh loan while a promise of waiving off all the loans was made. They hoped that by kidnapping the Tahsildar, they could exert pressure on the State Government to waive off all the loans.

The Police said that they are probing all angles and it was too early to establish the motive of the kidnap. Earlier a woman angle had also surfaced in the kidnap. The accused were arrested on Aug. 25 and were in the Police custody for two days and the Court has now handed over them to judicial custody.