Kochi woman cooks up 'kidnap' bid to mislead fiance, sends police into tizzy

Kochi: What initially appeared to be a chilling abduction case in the city turned out to be a fabricated story, after the police found that a 24-year-old woman had allegedly staged the incident to mislead her fiance.

The woman, a pharmacist working at a private hospital in Kochi and a native of Thalassery in Kannur, has been booked by the Elamakkara police after her complaint about being "kidnapped by men travelling in a white car" triggered a large-scale police search across the city.

According to the police, the Emergency Response Support System helpline 112 received a call from the woman's friend on the evening of March 11. The caller said the woman had been abducted by a group waiting in a white car along Meenchira Road in Edappally and later dumped at an isolated stretch near a railway line after being assaulted.

Acting on the information, police patrol teams rushed to the spot and found the woman standing there. The case was initially registered by the Cheranalloor Police Station before being transferred to the Elamakkara Police Station for further investigation, as the incident fell under its jurisdiction. 

"She claimed she was wrongly kidnapped by the kidnappers and that after realising they had mistaken her for someone else, they abandoned her on the road," police sources said.

The complaint prompted a major response from the police, who launched a search operation to trace the alleged kidnappers.

"Almost three teams of police in different vehicles roamed across the city to track down the suspected 'kidnappers' based on her statements. Entire patrol teams were put on alert," a police officer said.

However, the investigation soon began to raise doubts. The police scanned CCTV cameras in the area where the alleged abduction was said to have taken place, but found no evidence of the white car mentioned by the woman. Instead, officers recovered footage showing her walking calmly with a man along the road around the time she had claimed to be in captivity. 

"After securing CCTV visuals, we found no such white car or kidnapping taking place. There were serious inconsistencies in her statements. When questioned again, she confessed that she had fabricated the story," the officer said. 

According to investigators, the woman had allegedly cooked up the kidnapping claim to hide her meeting with her former boyfriend from her fiance, who currently lives abroad and had expressed suspicions about her fidelity. It is learnt that her fiance, while talking to her on the phone, allegedly heard her ex-boyfriend talking and questioned her. She immediately hung up the phone and plotted the 'kidnap' story. 

The police said the emergency helpline had been misused during the incident. "She misused the emergency help toll-free number 112 for her drama. She has been served a notice and will have to appear before the police for further proceedings," the officer added.

The woman has been booked under Section 117(d) of the Kerala Police Act for deliberately providing false information to mislead the police. The police are also examining whether the friend who alerted the helpline did so genuinely out of concern or was aware that the kidnapping claim was fabricated.