Police on Sunday said they have rescued two girls who were "kidnapped" from Bhondsi area in Gurgaon and arrested three people, including the mother of one of the girls.
The arrested are identified as Rinki Tiwari (35) and her associates Sagar and Vikas alias Suraj.
The two girls -- 14 years old and nine years old -- had gone missing on Friday night.
According to police, Tiwari is the mother of the 14-year-old girl and a friend of the younger girl's mother. She owed Rs 26 lakh to her friend and hence hatched the plan to kidnap the nine-year-old and demand a ransom of Rs 50 lakh.
To avoid suspicion, she also kidnapped her own daughter.
Tiwari runs a dhaba near Hero Honda Chowk and her husband is a street vendor. The couple also own a car which they have attached to a cab aggregator.
On Friday night, the younger girl's family had organised a religious ceremony at their house in Maruti Kunj, Bhondsi, to which Tiwari was invited.
During the ceremony, she lured the young girl out of the house on the pretext of buying her an ice cream. Sagar, Tiwari's cab driver, and Vikas alias Suraj, who works at her dhaba then drove the girl away, police said.
To avoid suspicion, Tiwari hoodwinked the younger girl's parents that her daughter, too, had been kidnapped.
"Rinki (Tiwari) was in regular touch with both the girls after the kidnapping. After an hour, she demanded Rs 50 lakhs from the father of the younger girl by making a call through a mobile app. But our team not only rescued the girls in time but also nabbed all three accused," Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Upasana said.
However, the nine-year-old girl's father filed a complaint with the police, who quickly launched an intenstive search.
Fearing that they will be trapped, Tiwari and her associates left both the girls near a mall at Hero Honda Chowk.
The girls then narrated the incident to a security guard nearby, who in turn, informed the police.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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