Bhubaneswar: The Mayurbhanj Police in Odisha have arrested two persons on the charges of killing the mastermind of a fake kidnapping plot aiming to grab the ransom amount, said a senior official on Friday. 

The accused were identified as Asish Singh (24) and Karama Singh (22) of Baripada Sadar police station area in Mayurbhanj district.

Police sources claimed that the deceased identified as Chandan Kumar Swain was a resident of Marsaghai in Kendrapara district.

The deceased Chandan who used to work as a supervisor at the garment factory of his paternal uncle Banshidhar Swain located in Bengaluru for the last three years quit his job on December 17, 2024 following some disagreement with uncle and job dissatisfaction and returned back to Bhubaneswar.

Chandan during his stay in Bengaluru had befriended the prime accused Ashis who also worked in the same garment factory.

As the deceased Chandan was badly in need of money, he hatched a plan along with the accused Ashis to extract ransom of Rs 50 lakhs from his uncle Banshidhar by staging a fake kidnapping plot of the deceased.

Meanwhile, Ashis got displeased with Chandan for insisting on taking the lion share of the Rs 50 lakh for being the mastermind and decided to take away the whole ransom amount by killing Chandan.

On December 21, the deceased reached Mayurbhanj where Ashis killed Chandan by slitting his throat at the embankment of river Budhabalanga at village Gumudi, near his native village.

Ashis later with the help of Karama buried the half-burnt body of Chandan in the embankment and threw the knife in the river.

Ashis later came to Bhubaneswar where he telephoned Deepak Swain (factory owner’s son) by using the deceased's Mobile SIM and demanded Rs 50 Lakhs by pretending himself as the kidnapper of the deceased as well as himself.

On December 25, a case was filed against an unknown kidnapper at Kharavel Nagar Police station in Bhubaneswar over the complaint of a relative of the deceased.

Meanwhile, some locals at Gumudi village in Mayurbhanj on December 26 spotted the deceased’s hand protruding out of the sand and informed the police who exhumed the body and started investigation of the case. With the help of call detail records of the accused Ashis and other leads fetched during investigation, police nabbed the accused duo who will be forwarded to court on Saturday.

(IANS)