COMMISSIONER of Police, Delta State, Mr. Ikechukwu Aduba, has said there was a new trend in kidnapping in the state, in which children conspire with kidnap syndicates to demand and collect ransom from their parents.
Speaking to Vanguard in an interview, he said from the series of kidnap cases investigated by the police, the emerging pattern showed involvement of insiders.
Aduba, who described the development as shocking, said: “Brothers now plot and kidnap brothers in the state to extort money from their parents, while children set up their parents for kidnappers.”
He, however, said “there is no state that it is crime free. It is not where you have one or two crimes, you generalize it that there is crime everywhere. We have a very strong anti-crime mechanism in the state. Twenty four hours, our men on always on the street.”
According to him, “recently in the state, a kidnapped victim in Warri and all of them who kidnapped him, including an undergraduate, were found to be children of same parents. They stage-managed the kidnap to defraud their own father.
“When we told their father that there was an insider’s factor, he did not believe. It involved the entire family. He thought we were joking, but three of his sons were involved. Even the one kidnapped was part of the game. The man broke down when the facts unfolded before him.
“There was also a particular case in which a boy wanted to dupe his father of N30 million that he had been kidnapped. At the end of the day, we retrieved the boy in a native doctor’s place.”
Aduba said police were not magicians and needed information from members of the public.
He said:”We follow up, but when the people chicken out, what do you expect the police to do? The one in Issele-Uku, we were following up, all of sudden, the family chickened out.”