5 MSU students get 7 years RI for kidnapping builder's son in Guj

Vadodara, Jul 1 (UNI) A fast-track court has sentenced five former students of M S University, Baroda, to seven-year rigorous imprisonment for kidnapping teenaged son of a city builder in 2003.

The convicts included a BBA student Karishma Jadav and her boyfriend Shailendra Pandey, an MBA student of MSU, who abducted the school boy with the help of three of their classmates -- Shasank Goel, Somashish and Ruturaj Bora.

The verdict pronounced by the Judge V J Mehta yesterday, found all the five guilty of kidnapping, criminal conspiracy and wrongful confinement, but acquitted them of charges framed under the Arms Act. The convicts were also fined Rs 5000 each.

According to the prosecution case, the students hatched the kidnapping plan after Karishma failed in her bid to get a job for Shailendra in the builder Ashok Shah's Ellora Park office, where she was doing a job.

On December 15, 2003, they abducted the builder's 14-year-old son Ashutosh in a stolen car when he was going to his school, and demanded a ransom of Rs one crore. Six days later, police, which used to tap their phone calls, raided an apartment close to the office of the builder and saved his son. While Karishma was arrested on the spot, four of her accomplices were nabbed on the same day from their other hideouts.

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