MUMABI: In a bizarre case faintly reminiscent of the 2014 Hollywood thriller ‘Gone Girl’, a Mira Road woman, desperate to get money out of her husband, allegedly staged her own abduction. The woman sent him ransom messages and a photo of herself (which turned out to be a selfie) lying in an unconscious state on WhatsApp, and kept the police force on their toes for over 24 hours, beginning Sunday.Six police teams spent a sleepless night to “rescue” the 35-year-old mother of two who was finally nabbed from Mira Road station late on Monday. The woman and her husband reside in Vijay Park with their children aged seven and five. The couple runs a coaching class for school students where they also teach.The woman walked free on Tuesday as her husband did not press any charges against her. She told cops that she wanted to extort money from her husband as he did not share the coaching class profits with her. The couple has been married for 10 years.But the police are contemplating booking the “smart and intelligent” woman, as they decribed her, for extortion “as the entire police machinery was out on the streets to rescue her”, said Mahesh Patil, Thane rural superintendent of police.The woman left home for the coaching class around 1pm on Sunday. Hours later, her husband received a WhatsApp message from her cellphone from a “male kidnapper” who made a Rs 10 lakh ransom demand. Another message had a photograph of his wife lying in an unconscious state with her mouth gagged. The husband rushed to the police. A kidnapping and extortion case against unknown persons was filed with Kashimira police on Sunday.The six police teams, including one of the crime branch, were activated to track her down. By Monday evening, it became clear that the woman had “abducted” herself to get money out of her husband, as cops did not find any eyewitnesses to the alleged abduction from a busy road.The woman was found loitering at Mira Road station. It turned out that she had travelled by train till Bhusaval in Jalgaon district, spending the night on train. Her cellphone location moved from Bhusaval to Karjat, Kalyan, Bhandup, Khar and finally Mira Road.Concluding that the kidnapper was using trains (as the cellphone locations were along tracks and railway stations), alerts were issued across stations. The closed circuit television (CCTV) of Mira Road station was also under watch, said Kashimira police inspector Vilas Sanap.On Monday night, when the woman’s cellphone location showed Mira Road station, cops searched the CCTV images which captured her movement on the platform. She was nabbed minutes before she was to board a train to Churchgate.The woman confessed to the staged crime and said she was influenced by crime thrillers on television. After reaching the coaching class around 1.10pm, she had taken a selfie of herself lying on the floor.She boarded a train to Bhusaval and continued to send her husband ransom messages at regular intervals. She spent the night on train and dropped by at Mira Road on Monday night, hoping her husband would agree to pay the ransom amount. She planned to ask him to leave the bag with the sum near the station.What the husband did not tell the police was that two months ago, the woman had withdrawn Rs 80,000 from their bank account without his knowledge. When he questioned her, she lied saying she paid the sum to a man who had kidnapped their son. The money was given to her father, said the police.