Four BPO employees were kidnapped at night in Bengaluru’ Koramangala by a gang of eight men for this reason

Four manager-level employees of a private company in Bengaluru were kidnapped on Saturday morning from the city's Koramangala area. The police have now arrested eight people and seized a Toyota Inova and a Maruthi Suzuki Wagon R, which they used for the crime.

The four employees were working for a Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company called Global Telecom Connect Pvt. Limited.

The kidnapping occurred at around 1 am on Saturday. The employees were working late at night. The accused had gone to the call centre at midnight, called them downstairs and threatened them by posing as policemen.

Once Pawan, Rajveer, Akash and Anas were out of the building, they were forced into the car and driven off. The accused then demanded a sum of Rs 25 lakh from the men. They transferred around Rs 8.90 lakh from their operation managers account to four different bank accounts of the relatives of the accused via online banking. Some reports say that the victims transferred around Rs 18.90 lakh. Police were later informed that the men had continued to demand physical cash until police arrived.

Other BPO staff at the office noticed the four missing and called the police at around 4:30 am. The online cash transfer helped police locate the accused.

Officers immediately jumped into action and formed four teams to search for the accused.

At around 11 am, officials located the the men and found the four employees who were kidnapped at a lodge in Hoskote.

DCP Fatima, who spoke to reporters, said that all eight of the accused hailed from Kolar district. The men were between the ages of 27 and 30 years.

It's suspected that the accused may have used the recent call centre raids to their advantage to pose as policemen.

A case was registered at the Koramangla police station, and officials are investigating the gang and their relation to the victims.