Youth stages fake abduction to avoid marrying girl

A 22-year-old man faked his abduction to avoid marrying a girl of his family's choice in south Kashmir's Pulwama district.

Would-be groom Arshid Ahmad Magray and his brother Shameem Ahmad Magray planned the abduction in full Bollywood-style and even cooked up a story that involved complaining to the police that the kidnapping may have been the would-be bride's handiwork.

The police said they had received a complaint from Shameem in which he said that unknown gunmen barged into his house and abducted Arshid on the intervening night of Febuary 21 and 22. The police registered a case of abduction put the investigation on a fast track mode. The cops were in for a big surprise when they traced Arshid to the house of his friend Javid Ahmad Dar in neighbouring Watho village.

Arshid buckled during questioning and spilled the beans about the make-believe drama. "It was found that Arshid was engaged to a girl against his will,' a police spokesperson said. "He staged the kidnapping drama with the help of his brother Shameem and four of his friends."

Shameem and his friends had posed as militants and entered into their house in the dead of night and whisked away Arshid in a Tata Sumo, which was driven by a friend, Tariq Ahmad Mir.

"Arshid was kept in the house of his friend Javid Ahmad Dar to give an impression that the girl to whom he was engaged was having an affair with someone else. And that she, with the help of unknown gunmen, had kidnapped Arshid," spokesman said.

The police questioned all the accused in the case and are in the process of lodging different cases against them for misleading law-enforcement agencies. "We will register a separate case against the accused for misleading the law," Tejinder Singh, Superintendent of Police, Pulwama, told dna.