'It was a one-sided love affair, like SRK's Darr': Dipti Sarna's kidnapper stalked her for over a year, say police

Five people have been arrested in the abduction case of Snapdeal employee Dipti Sarna. Four other accused are absconding, CNN-IBN reported on Monday morning. The 24-year-old, who went missing on 10 February, but subsequently returned home two days later, took a police team through the route that her abductors took on Sunday, the Hindustan Times reported. Dipti was travelling in a shared auto before she was kidnapped. The police claimed that the main accused in the case is a ‘psychopath.’ Ghaziabad senior superintendent Dharmendra Singh is quoted in another report in Hindustan Times as saying that the main accused was in a one-sided love affair with Dipti_._ He even went on to make an analogy to the movie Darr, starring Shah Rukh Khan, and added that  criminals like him were “hardcore”. Further, it is also suggested in the report that the accused had allegedly stalked Dipti for over a year, after first spotting her in a metro. Other reports quoted the police as saying that the stalker did not want to cause her any harm as he was trying to be affectionate towards her. Speaking to reporters on Monday, the Ghaziabad SSP said, “The abductor had been stalking the girl for some time. He met the girl at Rajiv Chowk for the first time.” In the 36 hours for which Dipti Sarna went missing, there was no clue where she stayed.But details slowly started emerging on Friday evening. Dipti’s father Narendra Sarna told NDTV that while his daughter did not wish to press charges, she was abducted by four men at knife-point. [caption id=“attachment_2623010” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Dipti Sarna with her family. Image courtesy: ANI @twitter[/caption] “They blindfolded her and dropped her at some railway station at 3 or 4 am… (they) didn’t harm her in anyway and they even gave her food on time,” he said. Adding that the kidnappers were “beginners”, who allegedly even left a gun with Dipti at some point, Narendra postulated, “They got afraid that is why they left her.” On 10 February night, she had hired an auto from outside Vaishali Metro Station. According to police, Dipti was on her way from Vaishali metro station to the old bus stand of Ghaziabad where her father Narendra Sarna, a resident of Kavi Nagar, was waiting to pick her up when he received a frantic call from her friend. “Dipti’s friend said that something had happened to her. They were talking on the phone when he heard her scream and the call got disconnected. He asked me to look for her,” said Narendra. He was supposed to pick up Dipti from the spot he was waiting at, like he did every evening, after she returned from her office in Gurgaon. “Everyday, she would call us twice on her way back home. Once when she reached the metro station and then again when she was near the Hindon bridge. Her father would then pick her up,” said her mother Vandana. Narendra said that sometimes, he would pick Dipti up from Vaishali metro station. “Why did I not do that yesterday,” he had said lamenting before her return. The family was afraid that Dipti had been abducted. However, the family received good news on Friday morning. Dipti’s father said that she called him up in the morning and told him that she was in train in Panipat and coming to Vaishali. “She told me that she will come to Vaishali, but I asked her not to come to Vaishali and said I will come to New Delhi Railway Station to pick her. “I don’t know how she came (managed to escape). She was calling me up from the phone of her co-passenger in the train. She was found sitting in the train. I don’t know whether she was in trauma,” he told reporters here. Ghaziabad residents on Thursday evening blocked traffic on national highway-24, and also staged a sit-in at the office of the senior superintendent of police. UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s office had tweeted that he had asked the Ghaziabad Senior Superintendent of Police to “personally head the search operation”, and that several teams had been formed. With inputs from agencies