NEW DELHI: Three persons, including an advocate at a Haryana court, have been arrested in a joint operation by the Special Cell of the Delhi police and the Haryana police for allegedly abducting and killing a rice mill owner of Haryana. The accused had been demanding a ransom of Rs. 1 crore even five days after killing the victim.

Ramesh Jain, a rice mill owner from Ganaur in Haryana, had gone missing on December 25 last year when he was on his way to the mill. After 10 days, Mr. Jain's family began getting ransom calls in which the caller demanded Rs. 1 crore. A Haryana Police team then got in touch with the Special Cell to try and rescue the victim.

Following investigations, the joint team arrested the three accused, Dharmendra Kumar Tiwari, Surinder Kumar Jain and Pawan Kumar Tyagi, at the Inter-State Bus Terminus Kashmere Gate on Friday. The Maruti car in which they were travelling was also seized. The mobile phone of the victim was also allegedly recovered from their possession.

During interrogation, the accused allegedly confessed to having hatched the conspiracy at the behest of Surender's son Amar Jain. Surender was a partner of Mr. Jain and the two had fallen out following a monetary dispute. Amar had got in touch with Pawan Tyagi, an advocate in Gannaur court, through his brother Praveen Tyagi and orchestrated the entire plan. Dharmendra, a driver who knew Amar, trailed Mr. Jain on December 25 in his Maruti van -- in which Surender and Praveen were also present -- and abducted him on an isolated stretch.

They then drove the vehicle to Jhinjhana near Muzzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh and confined Mr. Jain in a field. Every now and then they would inject sedatives to keep Mr. Jain unconscious. However, on the fifth day of his captivity Mr. Jain succumbed to an overdose of drugs.

The accused then threw his body in a small river in Shamli. Five days later, they made the first ransom call. The calls were made from different places like Baghpat in U.P. and Buxar and Patna in Bihar. Dharmendra, a native of Bihar, would make the ransom calls, the police said.

Efforts are now on to arrest Amar and Praveen. The police are also trying to recover Mr. Jain's body from the river in Shamli.

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