West Bengal: Three teens addicted to online gaming kidnap friend for ransom, kill him when demand not fulfilled

In West Bengal’s Nadia district, three class 10 students kidnapped and later strangulated their ‘friend’ to death when the latter’s family could not fulfil their ransom demand of Rs 3 lakhs. The victim was 14 years old and studied in the same class as the accused.

According to reports, the children wanted to buy computers to play video games with the ransom money. However, when their demand was not fulfilled they killed their own friend. The teenage kidnappers reportedly served Rasgullas (an authentic Bengali sweet) and cold drinks to their friend to fulfil his last wish before killing him.

The incident came to the fore when the victim’s family filed a missing complaint at the Krishnanagar police station on Friday, August 25.

The family of the victim said in the complaint that he left his home on Friday, on a bicycle, to meet his friends, but did not return home after that.

Based on the complaint, the police launched an investigation and arrested the three accused.

During interrogation, the trio reportedly confessed to killing their friend. They said that they had demanded a ransom of Rs 3 lakh from the boy’s family to purchase a gaming laptop. However, when the family failed to meet their demands, they strangled their friend.

They also asked the student about his last wish and served him rasgulla and soft drinks to fulfil it. According to the police, the accused later packed the child’s body in a bag and abandoned it in a remote location. The police recovered the body from a pond in the Hijuli district situated on the outskirts of Krishnanagar on Saturday, August 26.

The police sent the deceased body for post-mortem and booked the accused under relevant sections of the Juvenile Act.

The police said that the accused were afraid that if they let go of their friend, he would go to the police. As a result, they killed him.

According to reports, the father of the deceased had died a few years ago. He lived with his mother in his maternal uncle’s house at Ghurni in Krishnanagar.