Snapdeal employee case: Accused inspired by SRK's film 'Darr'

Ghaziabad, Feb 15: Five persons were today arrested in connection with the mysterious abduction of Snapdeal executive Deepti Sarna, with police saying that the prime accused was a Bollywood-inspired "psychopath" who was tracking her for around a year and wanted to win her heart.

SSP Dharmendra Singh, who had earlier indicated possible contradictions in the woman's version on the day she was traced, today gave a clean chit to her, saying her version was right.

The prime accused has as many as 30 cases registered against him and he escaped from police custody in Sonepat during a court hearing in June 2014, and around seven months later he saw Sarna with a male friend at Rajiv Chowk Metro Station and fell in love with her, the official said.

"The accused was highly inspired by Bollywood movie Darr, in which Shahrukh Khan's character gets obsessed with a woman, he read Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' during the time he spent in jail and was inspired by the relationship between Hitler and Eva Braun, and he also took inspiration from the life and struggle of Genghis Khan," the official said.

The accused started tracking Sarna's movements and soon bought two auto-rickshaws to execute his plans of abducting her. He tried to do so several times but failed as Sarna, who used to deboard metro at Ghaziabad's Vaishali station, always preferred taking shared autos in which a few women were already seated, Singh said.

On February 10, he along with his associates, managed to puncture the auto-rickshaw in which Sarna and several others were travelling and intercepted the vehicle with his own auto, in which three of the co-accused were present, and convinced the driver of the punctured vehicle to shift the passengers, of which three were women (including Sarna), to his vehicle, the official said.

There were two vacant seats in the autorickshaw, and it was Sarna and another woman who decided to board it as they were in a rush to reach their destinations. During the journey, the accused men present in the auto, pulled out a knife and threatened the other woman asking her to step out of the vehicle. Once she obliged, they blindfolded Sarna, pointed a gun at her and headed towards an undisclosed location, the official said.

On their way, the autorickshaw in which Sarna was being taken to, broke down. Meanwhile, the prime accused was following her in a car. At the point where the auto-rickshaw broke down, the accused men dumped her mobile phone (which the police have failed to recover) and backpack behind an under-construction bungalow.

"The accused is a psychopath, for which the motive behind the crime could not be cracked. He had not disclosed about his motive even to any of the co-accused. To some of them he said that the woman they were to abduct was a hawala operator and she could fetch them crores and to others who were roped in into the plan later he said that he needed men to thrash a person," the senior official said.

From the spot of the auto-breakdown, the prime accused made Sarna sit in his car and headed towards his native village. On the way, his vehicle ran out of gas for which he borrowed his cousin's car and continued the journey towards a village in UP's Baghpat.

There they held Sarna captive for a night, during which the prime accused did his best to convince her that he did not want to hurt her and it were his co-accused who had actually abducted her.

He played the 'hero' and, meanwhile, kept telling Sarna that it was her male friend (with whom he often used to see Sarna) who had ulterior motives and wanted to kill Sarna's relatives, the senior official said.

The next morning, the prime accused took Sarna to a railway station and made her sit on a train heading towards Delhi. By then Sarna was convinced that he was her saviour and even during her interaction with the SSP (Ghaziabad) she requested him not to take any action against the man, who later turned out to be the main accused.

Sarna then borrowed a co-passenger's phone and called up her father and later reached home. "The accused have to be interrogated for further details," the official added.