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Towards the early evening on November 27, six-year-old Susan* and her brother Sebastian*, two years older, were on their way to a tuition class, a few metres away from their home in rural Oyoor, in Kerala’s Kollam district, when the unthinkable happened.
The road was almost deserted when they were jumped by unidentified people from a waiting white sedan. While the girl was forcibly dragged inside, Sebastian tried his level best to resist and clung to the door of the moving car in an attempt to rescue his sister. But they drove off with Susan, making one of the most extensively reported missing-person cases in Kerala’s recent history.
Sebastian, when he spoke to media, said there were four abductors, including a woman. Later, many residents remembered seeing the car in the locality.
A massive search was launched as soon as the abduction was reported, that evening itself. The police from Kollam and two neighbouring districts sealed the borders and vehicle inspections were carried out everywhere. As Susan’s photo was widely circulated on social media, civil groups, residents’ associations, and political parties also joined the search.
Together they scoured vacant buildings, quarries, rubber plantations, forest fringes, and fishing boats for Susan. High-voltage live reporting began on news channels, drawing both praise and flak. A few hours later, Susan’s parents, both nurses, received a ransom call, first demanding ₹5 lakh, then ₹10 lakh.
“It was a huge shock to know that a criminal gang was observing the area and targeting children. The girl belonged to a regular middle-class family and it’s a rural area, where we are not used to such incidents. The abduction seemed well-planned and it definitely spooked us,” says Anilkumar, a resident in the neighbourhood.
The brazen abduction shook the State, with parents suddenly being hyper-vigilant. After another attempt was reported from nearby Nallila, panic spread, while assumptions and wild theories started doing the rounds, including rumours about a professional kidnapping gang targeting children.
Jubairiya Beevi, panchayat ward member in the area, says residents are still reeling under confusion and shock. “Fear has gripped the area and even after a week, the situation remains tense. Now, parents accompany children to schools and madrasas,” she says.
Fear prevails, but there is a find
Meanwhile, the police traced the ransom call to a number from Paripally, about 12 km away, which belonged to Girija, a grocery storeowner. The abductors had borrowed her phone to contact the family and the call turned out to be the crucial evidence that led to a break in the case.
On November 28, the police released the sketch of a suspect, prepared by professional artists Smitha M. Babu and R.B. Shajith, based on the information provided by Girija. Though the sketch led to a Kundara resident who was an accused in some cases, the police soon realised the person wasn’t involved.
On the same day, almost 20 hours after the abduction, Susan was found abandoned at Asramam Maidan, located in the heart of Kollam town, about 25 km from Oyoor. The child had been left there by one of the abductors in broad daylight. A few college students spotted the unaccompanied child, identifying her with the help of pictures on social media. According to Dhananjaya, one of the students, she was sitting with a woman when they arrived.
“They seemed like a normal mother-daughter duo, and both were wearing masks. We sat on a bench near them and suddenly the woman walked away. When she did not return for a while, we went near the child and realised it was the abducted child,” said the students. The woman had hired an auto from the nearby Link Road to Asramam, under 1 km, the auto driver confirmed within hours, after watching the news.
As per Susan’s statement, she had spent the night at a house where she watched cartoons on a laptop. With Susan’s help, the police got two more sketches of the accused prepared, which led to their arrest.
More mystery
The following day, the police inspected Susan’s father’s quarters in Pathanamthitta district, about 50 km from Oyoor village. They seized a phone from the quarters near his hospital, which he claimed was old and not in use. As a district-level office-bearer of a nurses’ association, he alleged that the police were targeting him and his organisation.
This triggered a volley of reports in the media that the abduction was linked to a scam related to the Occupational English Test (OET), mandatory for healthcare professionals seeking employment overseas.
On December 1, the Kollam police arrested a couple and their daughter from Puliyarai, near Tenkasi, a little less than 100 km away, in Tamil Nadu, in connection with the abduction. The arrest of Padmakumar, 52, his wife, Anitha Kumari, 45, and daughter Anupama, 20, was recorded on December 2 and they were presented before the media as the only accused. There were unconfirmed reports that Susan’s father had taken ₹5 lakh from the accused for the admission of his daughter, and since this didn’t happen, it had resulted in the kidnapping. It took Additional Director General of Police, Law & Order, Kerala, M.R. Ajith Kumar to hold to press conference to state specifically that this was untrue.
According to the ADGP, the family executed the crime without any external help and the only motive was money. The family had fled to Tenkasi on November 30. By then the new set of sketches were in circulation.
The police say Padmakumar is an engineering graduate who has multiple assets, including a house at Chathannur, Kollam, and a farmhouse at Chirakkara. His 20-year-old daughter Anupama is a social media influencer.
Officers, who were part of the core investigating team, say the family had been planning the abduction for over a year and the crime was carried out with all precautions to sidestep modern surveillance measures. In a move to outrun the police, they didn’t use any cell phones and the child was kept at their house in Chathannur, between 7 and 8 km from Oyoor. While the family had no criminal background, the police say it was post-pandemic financial crisis that prompted them to look for illegal methods to make quick money.
They add that the Oyoor abduction was only a trial as the family was planning to make a career out of kidnapping-for-ransom. Anupama had a YouTube page with more than five lakh followers, from which she used to reportedly earn in the range of ₹3.8 to ₹5 lakh a month. But her channel was demonetised in July throwing the family into severe financial crisis, say the police.
A special investigation team under Deputy Inspector General, Thiruvananthapuram Range, R. Nishanthini was investigating the case and around 100 law enforcers from three districts were part of the initial team.
“After the media shared the audio clip of the ransom call [made from Girija’s phone], we were contacted by someone who identified the voice as Anitha’s. After comparing Anitha’s picture with the sketch, we were almost convinced. When we searched their home, the car used for kidnapping and fake number plates were also found. By that time the family had fled to Tenkasi and a police team from Kollam located them at Puliyarai. Though the police had tried to track the IP address of the laptop on which Susan watched cartoons on the night of abduction, the process was not easy. It was taking time and we decided to pursue other leads,” says a senior official.
Confusion and concern
Multiple contradictions and loose ends have left the case open. Sebastian had seen three men in the car, and the man in the first sketch prepared with the help of Girija is yet to be identified. The ADGP says the child was confused and scared at the time.
Pradeesh Kumar, vice-president of Kalluvathukal panchayat, had given a statement that he saw the car in which the girl was abducted around 2 a.m. While travelling on the Pooyapalli-Pallikkal road, he had noticed a white car and a bike under suspicious circumstances.
“Both vehicles were travelling at a low speed and later, a blue car and a bike joined them. At least eight people were in the group, and it can be easily proven by checking the CCTV cameras in the area. My wife, who was travelling with me at that time, identified the accused after they were netted by the police. We had also found another group of people at Pakalkuri Junction, and all these details were shared with the police,” says Kumar.
On December 4, a day after the arrest, the husband and brother of Sheeba, the caretaker of the accused Padmakumar’s farmhouse, were attacked, allegedly for speaking to the media. Her family says that they received death threats after she identified her employer, post-arrest.
During interrogation, the police claim that Padmakumar confessed to a debt burden of ₹5 crore and Oyoor residents say they cannot believe that a middle-class family was targeted for clearing that debt.
As Crime Branch takes over the case, there are many questions and few answers.
(*Names of children changed)
