Representative image

NEW DELHI: A Bhojpuri film actor and his girlfriend were arrested on Monday for kidnapped his child in custody of his ex-wife from a market in Jamia Nagar. The man said that he wanted to teach his wife a lesson for not allowing him to meet the child.Cops at Jamia Nagar police station hunted for the child for three months and finally rescued him from a house in Laxmi Nagar.

The actor, Mohd Shahid (23), left his wife, Muskaan, three months ago after which she married another man. The woman was allowed custody of the two-year-old boy, Sehnaz, by a court.Unable to cope with separation, Shahid kidnapped the child and kept him with his live-in partner. In the meantime, he accused his former wife of selling off his son to divert attention from his role in the crime.

On June 25, he called Muskaan's mother, Mumtaz, and requested her to meet his son for Eid shopping at Batla House. He introduced his girlfriend, Sunaina Sharma (22) alias Alisha, to her. While he kept Mumtaz busy in conversation, Alisha offered to get the child fruit juice and took him to a relative's house in east Delhi.

After some time, Shahid pretended to get worried when he couldn't spot the child and accused Mumtaz of being careless.

“A case of kidnapping was registered and a team led by SHO (Jamia Nagar) Sanjeev Kumar was formed to track down the kidnappers,“ said deputy commissioner of police (southeast) Romil Baaniya.

During the probe, Shahid kept misleading the cops about the child's location.He told them that his rivals may have kidnapped Sehnaz and taken him to Bareilly or somewhere in western UP. The cops went on a wild goose chase based on his claims and travelled to various villages to rescue the child.

However, when the fami ly members were questioned, Shahid's role started getting dubious as his versions were found with several loopholes. After a few days he stopped appearing for questioning. A manhunt was subsequently launched to nab him.

On Monday , the police team got a tip-off about Shahid being spotted at Laxmi Nagar Metro station after which he was arrested.

Shahid told the cops that Alisha took the child to different places in Delhi-NCR. Later, he joined her and they started living on rent in West Vinod Nagar. They had told people that the child was theirs. The accused had acted in a Bhojpuri movie “From Allahabad to Islamabad“.

