Kidnappers demand Rs. 20 mn to release youth

An unidentified gang has kidnapped a 20-year-old son of a wealthy businessman in the Wariyapola area on Thursday night and demanded a ransom of Rs. 20 million to release him.
The businessman and another son of his have received telephone call threatening that the abducted youth would be killed unless the ransom money was paid, according to police.
Half an hour later Mohamed Ijaz, the other son of the businessman had received a telephone call from an unknown person demanding the ransom for the release of the boy.
Ijaz had told the caller that they did not have that amount of money and promised to give Rs. 150,000 and a certain amount of jewellery. The caller had first asked Ijaz to bring the money and the jewellery to a place and then had changed the place twice and finally had asked him to take them back. After that they had not given a place to bring the money though they had called the businessman several times.
They had used the abducted boy’s phone to call the businessman and let the boy to talk to the businessman too.(Srinath Prasanna & Sampath Seneviratne)