Serial kidnapper on prowl, CBI alerts Pb

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, December 10

On CBI’s advisory, the Department of School Education has alerted all schools in Punjab about the possible presence of a serial kidnapper who targets girl students. The English “teacher”, a fugitive, is wanted in several cases of kidnapping in different states.

The accused, Dhaval Harishchandra Trivedi, had worked in some private schools in Mansa and Kapurthala districts from 2012 to 2014. The department has sent his picture and profile to all schools, asking them to be cautious.

Trivedi was arrested from Punjab on July 14, 2014, for abduction and rape of two minor girls and awarded life imprisonment by a Rajkot court in Gujarat. After his release on parole on July 28 last year, the accused abducted a minor girl. He has committed eight such acts of crime in the past eight years.

The Central Bureau of Investigation began its investigation in May after a man approached the Gujarat High Court, demanding a CBI probe into the abduction of his minor daughter on August 11, 2018. The probe agency found out that Trivedi was involved in as many as seven cases of kidnapping and convicted in one such case.

His ‘modus operandi’ involved residing in remote areas of different states under pseudonym and fake IDs, imparting tuitions in English, getting employed in schools as principal, vice-principal, administrator or teacher and subsequently eloping with minor girl students, the CBI said.

His past pseudonyms include TDK Chandra, TKD Chandra, D Kumar and Dharmendra Kumar. He got a fake election card and ration card issued from Kalka in Haryana to get a job at a private school at Budladha, Mansa.

The CBI says the accused is in possession of the Aadhaar card of the kidnapped girls’ father and there is likelihood that he may use his identity.

The CBI has asked the department to circulate the photographs of the accused and the victim to all schools, teachers and students in the state to trace the accused.