Mumbai, January 30: A Mumbai court has today acquitted four men accused of kidnapping and murdering Mumbai teenager Adnan Patrawala in 2007, who they had allegedly met via social networking site Orkut.
The verdict is being read by the city as a moment of shame for the Mumbai Police, whose lethargic inquiry has belied what experts say was an open-and-shut case.
The court said there was not enough evidence to prove that the arrested men are guilty. A fifth - who is a minor and is being tried separately - is also likely to be declared innocent.
At a press conference today, Adnan's father, Aslam, steered clear of criticizing the police, saying only that he would appeal to a higher court.
"We are satisfied with what the police have done. I don't know what went wrong," he said.
At the court, another father expressed his thanks. "I am relieved that my son is innocent. The way he was trapped anything could have happened to him,'' said Arun Bhatt, whose young son, Ayush, had been in jail for the murder since 2007.
16-year-old Adnan's murder on an August night in 2007 made headlines for many reasons. His alleged killers were young and included two teens. They had befriended the rich Andheri businessman's son on Orkut, hugely popular among teens at the time for social networking. After they kidnapped him, reports on a television channel allegedly triggered panic. And they decided to strangle him.
The court said that forensic and circumstantial evidence was crudely handled by the police so that instead of complimenting each other, the different pieces of information rattled around in a largely incongruous narrative against the accused.
On the evening of August 18, 2007, Adnan took his father's Skoda to meet with his friends at a gaming parlour at a mall in North West Mumbai. The group of five people he was meeting with used to interact with him regularly on Orkut. They had zeroed in on him after scanning the site for other potential victims. According to the police, the men wanted quick money. Some had debts they needed to settle. They drew up a list of people they could kidnap for ransom. Adnan appeared trusting and came from a wealthy family.
The alleged killers, according to the police, offered Adnan a spiked drink and suggested they go for a drive. The next morning, Adnan's father received a call asking for a two-crore ransom. Meanwhile, news of the kidnapping had broken on TV. So Adnan's abductors strangled him, dumped his body in some bushes on Palm Beach Road in Navi Mumbai, and took local trains home.
The only eyewitness produced by the police was the last person to see Adnan live. He said Adnan's dead body was discovered on August 19. Police records list the next day. Cellphone records for some of those accused of the murder did not include the crucial details of three different calls made to Adnan's father for ransom. The court today also said it was hard to believe the eyewitness' claim that the murder ws planned to the last detail in a busy mall.
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